Eternal Light
by Mikage1
Summary: Marriage is not all that Wolfram dreamed it would be, and the world is not the peaceful place he'd always wanted. It's said that Yuuri is the greatest king to ever live, but greatness comes with a price. Established Yuuri/Wolfram. Mpreg. General dark themes in later chapters.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Kyou Kara Maou or any of its characters.

**Beta-ed by:** G. Much of the plot was also devised in conjunction with her. I owe her my deepest and heartfelt thanks for all her years of service and friendship.

**Warnings:** Mpreg (and resulting pregnancy issues), angst, depression, language, adult themes, dark themes, religious themes, racial issues (demon and human), violence, blood, torture, sexual content, sexual content of dubious consent, non-consensual sex, original characters (because using the same old villains gets boring), character death (most likely minor, but I have considered offing a major character or two that is not Yuuri or Wolfram). Various other warnings may apply at a later date. I will do my best to update the list as need be. It is very likely that this fic will be quite dark in nature. I apologize if that is not to your liking.

**Pairings(s):** Yuuri/Wolfram. A bit different than my usual route, with Wolfram being uncomfortable with their relationship this time around instead of Yuuri.

**Setting:** Fourteen years post-season three. Yuuri is 29 and Wolfram is 96 (19).

**Rating:** M

**A/N: **In which I, once again, get distracted from all the other fics I should be working on and start something new. In my defense, the idea for this fic has been sitting in my brain for the last five or six years. I only now got around to starting it.

As always, I cannot promise quick updates, as I am still technically on hiatus (and have plenty of other fics I should be working on), but as this fic is... Idk... not _entirely _different than some of my others, I feel that it's different enough that I would appreciate any feedback my readers have to provide.

No, Wolfram will probably not have it any easier in this fic than he does in my others, but the problems here lie less with Yuuri and more with Wolfram himself. Also, Yuuri has not been nor will he be unfaithful in this fic. Yay?

Also, I realize Mpreg might not be everyone's thing. To be honest, it's not always my thing either, but I mind it much less in this fandom than any other. You can blame the bearbee arc in the manga for that.

* * *

_**Eternal Light**_

by Mikage

**Chapter One**

Wolfram could tell that something was wrong almost immediately.

He didn't understand how, nor did he have any idea what the culprit was, but none of that changed the fact that he knew.

It was late January. He and Yuuri had spent most of December on Earth, visiting Mama and Father during a holiday that celebrated the coming of what Wolfram thought was a creepy, fat old man who stole down innocent people's chimneys and left packages wrapped in sparkling, crinkly paper under a tree decorated with blinking lights and palm-sized glass globes. There'd been cake and a dinner of crispy fried chicken, and he and Yuuri had laughed and danced a slow dance to the music playing on a contraption Yuuri and his parents called a "radio," songs about the fat man, and others about a different man named "Christ."

Wolfram had asked for an explanation, wondering why the holiday was named after that man when it was the fat man who brought all the presents. Yuuri had shaken his head at him and laughed, told him it was complicated, and led him upstairs to the bedroom they shared whenever they visited Earth, the one Yuuri had not used as often in the last eleven years as he had in the eighteen before.

In bed, Wolfram had been too distracted to feel angry that his question had gone unanswered.

Now that they'd returned, Wolfram almost wished they were back there, even though Earth scared and confused him as much as it intrigued him. At least there the weather hadn't been so dreary.

The skies above the capital were sunless and gray, the ground muddy from a cold rain that quickly changed to ice. The trees had already been covered, weighed down until many of their branches split and broke. Most were harmless, but some had struck a few of the castle residents or else damaged parts of the castle itself. The masons and groundkeepers seemed to be having a difficult job cleaning it all up. Wolfram took to watching from one of the windows in the royal bedchamber, curled up on a settee with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders and a goblet of mulled wine in his hands.

He felt tired, lethargic. He had nothing to do. The weather was too poor for joining his soldiers in their practice drills, and he had been discouraged from going with them on patrols after the wedding. "Discouraged" was, of course, not the most accurate word to describe the situation, but it sounded better than "forbidden." Concerns for his safety were now as high as Yuuri's. Given that Yuuri had never been the sort to stay out of trouble, Wolfram expected the security measures that had been put in place would remain stringent until such a time that the world proved them unnecessary. They had already had their fill of danger—kidnappings, assassination attempts, freak accidents…

Most days Wolfram didn't mind. Most days he could find a use for himself, or else he passed the time at his own leisure.

But most days he didn't feel like this.

Today there had been no paperwork for him to complete and his presence hadn't been required in any meetings, though it rarely was to begin with. The Aristocrats choose to deal with him sparingly, as did most other people, preferring to go directly to the King when there were matters of business to attend to.

There were to be no parties to be held this winter either, no guests to entertain besides the court, but Wolfram didn't feel much like seeing anyone anyway. He would rather sit and stare out the window, his mind fuzzy and his eyes drooping.

He read a lot instead. After a while, it failed to hold his attention the way it used to. He considered painting, but he had no inspiration to start a new piece or continue any of his old ones. He almost wrote to Greta, had a quill in his hand and parchment close by when he remembered he'd already sent her a letter the day of their return. Now he could only wait for a reply, pining for the little girl who was now a woman, far, far away in the Duchy of Zoracia, doing her duty to her people as her royal father did his duty to his.

And so Wolfram sat and waited without knowing what he was waiting for, leaning his head against the cool glass of the window and watching the activity below.

A tree had fallen, there in the grounds outside his chamber.

It didn't concern him the way it should have.

He could tell that something was wrong.

* * *

The weather improved by late-February, though not by much. The rain and ice transitioned into thick layers of snow, which covered the ground in a wet, white blanket that froze the townsfolk and obstructed most attempts at travel. In the distance, beyond the castle, little houses poked through the gloom in the capital, smoke curling from their chimneys into the gray, gray sky.

Wolfram saw none of this. He'd taken to bed some weeks earlier, moaning in discomfort as he curled in on himself, his stomach churning as if he were out at sea.

"I can have Gisela come look at you," Yuuri said, worry etched clearly upon his face as he slid his arms into the sleeves of his black jacket.

His hair was still wet from his morning bath, an ample drip-drip-drip that left damp patches on his shoulders.

Wolfram frowned and wished Yuuri would take the time to properly dry his hair. Fourteen years later and Yuuri still couldn't seem to kick some of his boorish habits.

He made no comment on it, and instead groaned a pitiful sounding, "No…"

He didn't want a healer—especially not Gisela, who would tut and cluck her tongue and make politely rude comments far above her station. He suspected she would even attempt to make it seem as if this impromptu illness were somehow his fault.

As if he _wanted_ to spent each day and night hanging over the chamber-pot.

"Do you want me to find your mother?" Yuuri asked him next.

He buttoned up his jacket but left the top two undone, his collar loose and open.

Wolfram's frown deepened, both at the state of Yuuri's clothing and at the implication that he might want or need his mother to tend to him, like some wretched child confined to bed with a fever.

"No," Wolfram said again. He would have added "I'm not a child" if he weren't afraid of being sick the next time he opened his mouth.

"Well, do you want-"

"Just get out and get to work!" Wolfram bellowed, tired of the hovering and the questions. However, the sudden shrill tone of his voice was unintentional, and he winced in immediate remorse.

Yuuri leveled him with a concerned frown but didn't waste the effort to argue. He approached Wolfram's side of the bed and reached out a hand to brush some of Wolfram's bangs off of his forehead, out of his face. Wolfram allowed the sweet gesture for only a moment before irritation compelled him to slap Yuuri's hand away.

He wanted to be left alone to his misery, either to waste away and die or drift off into the numbness of lethargy and sleep.

Dark eyes narrowed, exasperated—black eyes that were at once warm and cold, blithe and bitter, young and old, almost shifting in shape and attitude, bordering on serpentine before settling into something less fierce but just as commanding.

Wolfram remembered the Demon King, the other side to a young boy who was too carefree to understand darker emotion, but as Yuuri had grown so too had his understanding of the world. Now the Demon King within was contained and controlled, just there beneath the surface, so close he could be released at will during times of Yuuri's choosing, but far enough away for Yuuri to remain Yuuri in the meantime.

Few people noticed the subtle differences, the minuscule shifts in Yuuri's eyes, but Wolfram noticed and knew to tread carefully.

The Demon King was not as fond of him as Yuuri was. Once, Yuuri had told him the Demon King saw him as little more than a curiosity at his best and a nuisance at his worse. Since then, Wolfram had made as much of an effort as it was possible for him to make to remain in the Demon King's good graces.

He was not overly fond of the idea of meeting his end by incurring the Demon King's wrath.

He'd experienced that quite enough already.

Retracting his hand, Yuuri muttered something under his breath that Wolfram didn't hear and turned to march to the door, shutting it a bit too forcefully behind him.

Wolfram remained in bed for all of two seconds before stumbling off and darting to the washroom, where he gagged and heaved and emptied his stomach of the remnants of the previous night's meal.

He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand when he was sure he was done, stumbled back into the bedroom and collapsed onto the bed, feeling tired, weak, and absolutely wretched.

And he wondered… what had become of his life?

* * *

Wolfram hated the way His Eminence looked at him.

The Great Sage knew too much and said too little. He always had a peculiar gleam to his eye, like he was privy to secrets the rest of the world would never know. Wolfram thought it was because he'd lived so many lives over such a long period of time. There probably wasn't much that could surprise him anymore. But Wolfram also thought it was incredibly rude not to share, especially when the information could very well prove beneficial to others.

If there were reasons the Great Sage elected not to, Wolfram would never know.

Sometimes His Eminence observed him like a scientist might observe a rare specimen—the way Anissina observed her experiments, noting every change, every failure and success. Once or twice he might even smile like what he saw amused him, an enigmatic little thing that Wolfram could hardly ever read.

One might think that due to their close proximity and the fact that they both ranked high in the social hierarchy of the kingdom that Wolfram and His Eminence spent a great deal of time together. One might also expect that their mutual affiliations with Yuuri, and their respective appointments as Yuuri's spouse and adviser, meant that they had become well acquainted with one another. They talked to the same people, they visited many of the same places, they partook in many of the same activities, and they each worked for the safety and prosperity of the kingdom.

Yet to assume that Wolfram and His Eminence associated with one another more than was strictly necessary, to assume that they were friends, that they shared the same level of companionship as His Eminence shared with Yuuri (or even with Wolfram's elder brother) would be to assume too much.

His Eminence the Great Sage was a distant, shadowy figure. He revealed little of himself, neither his life as Ken Murata nor the memories of lives before. He looked nothing and everything like the Great Sage of four-thousand years ago, with none of his placid elegance but all of his cool reserve. He was impressive only for his coloring and his sharp mind. He did not use a sword or any apparent magic, nor did he ever seem inclined to try. If Wolfram didn't know any better he'd think the man was harmless, but that was, of course, far from the case.

Since the man's perceived treachery with the Forbidden Boxes, Wolfram had practiced caution around him. Trust was a hard thing to grant him when His Eminence insisted upon secrecy. Wolfram never encouraged more than a working relationship. He accepted His Eminence at court, spoke with him when it was necessary, deferred to his wisdom as was expected, and showed him the respect he so deserved.

But he didn't like him.

"They call him the Black Prince," His Eminence's nasally voice issued from two seats down.

Blood Pledge Castle had seen many changes in the last fourteen years, not all of which Wolfram approved of.

When Yuuri had first arrived, life and duty had been more of an adventure than a burden. Once the initial dissatisfaction of having a human king had passed, the politics of the time had been relatively uncomplicated, full of laughter and good cheer and a different sort of atmosphere than Wolfram had come to experience growing up in a royal household. The country had been young again, carefree and joyous in a way Wolfram had never known. The castle had been peaceful and sparsely populated, quiet but for Gunter's wailing and regular explosions from Anissina's lab.

It had lasted for the duration of Yuuri's formative years, up until he mastered the use of his magic and the combat skills Conrart had deemed it appropriate to impress upon him. When Yuuri's lessons with Gunter had come less and less frequently, when he could write and read the demon language as fluently as Japanese, when he could understand each of the local dialects and successfully learned the basics of two of the human tongues, and when he no longer needed Gwendal's constant guidance in political and legal matters, the caution that had since been used in instructing him in kingship had gradually declined.

Now royal life was all Wolfram had remembered it to be.

He would be lying if he said he enjoyed its return.

For the first eight years, they'd taken their meals in a private dining room. That manner of isolation was no longer encouraged. Instead, Yuuri was expected to take his meals the old way—privately in the royal chambers, or in the company of his court.

Being a social being, Yuuri often chose the court.

As such, the Great Hall was crowded with noble and aristocratic courtiers. Yuuri sat where Wolfram's mother had been seated before Yuuri's arrival in this world, in a grand chair at the center of a long table turned to face the rest of the large Hall. Wolfram sat to Yuuri's left, in the chair commonly reserved for the Queen Consort or, in the case of a male spouse, the Prince Consort. This seat had seen many occupants in Wolfram's life-time—first his father, then Stoffel as Regent during the war, and Gwendal in the same capacity immediately after.

The arrangement reminded Wolfram too much of a lonely childhood spent pining for a mother forever occupied by duty and a father taken by war. He saw all of the same face, heard many of the same types of rumors, and felt all of the same disconsolate emotions. He was not neglected, no; but he was thrust beneath the weight of public life and expected to rise to the occasion, with no complaints and no mistakes and none of the freedom to do and be what he wished.

Periodically he looked to the empty chair on his left, where his mother would have sat had she been in attendance, where Gwendal used to sit when they were children. Then he looked to the chair beyond it, the one he'd spent his boyhood years in, where Greta would have been if she were still a little girl.

But she was older now—governing her own land, presiding over her own court, making new friends and new allies and a name for herself in a world dominated by ambitious men.

And the castle was lonely again.

"Why call him that?"

Yuuri voice brought Wolfram back to the present.

In a better time, there had been little talk of work and politics at the dinner table. Wolfram had insisted upon it and Yuuri had agreed, suffering from the exhaustion of work and lessons and training, wanting nothing more than rest and relaxation during his evenings before repeating the process the very next day. Wolfram's concerns had been for a bit more than that. Greta had been young, and Wolfram remembered too clearly being a child surrounded by talk of famine and war and death. He had not wanted that for his daughter, nor—if he were to be quite honest—for himself. Dinner should be a time for family, to come together after a long day and take comfort in the company of loved ones.

That time was gone, and Wolfram was left grasping for the last remaining threads of the only truly happy years of his life.

"He has a reputation for ruthlessness in battle," His Eminence replied, "and it's said he wears black armor, likely for the shock factor the color's gained in the human lands."

His Eminence sat to Yuuri's right, in the place of honor typically reserved for guests.

"He calls you the Wicked Scourge," he added.

"What is this about?" Wolfram asked. He'd lost track of the conversation some time ago. It was not uncommon. In his despondency, some things tended to fade into the background.

"Prince Elric of Massenia," His Eminence replied. "Eldest son of King Godric the Second."

"What of him?"

"He's been making a bit of noise in the human realms."

Wolfram experienced a flare of irritation over the vague answer but somehow managed to contain it. "Noise of what sort?"

"He calls me the Wicked Scourge," Yuuri pointed out in something of a bitter fashion. "What kind of noise do you think he's making?"

Yuuri's expression was empty of much emotion, but the hard line of his jaw and the tense set of his shoulders spoke of a low mood. Whether or not the matter was one of any great concern, Yuuri did not seemed pleased by it.

"You've not mentioned anything about it before," Wolfram said.

"At the moment, the situation doesn't seem to be too serious," His Eminence explained, "but it could escalate if Elric gains more support."

"Massenia lies beyond Cimaron, to the far north across the Bitter Straight, does it not?"

His Eminence answered with a shallow nod.

"Is he likely to persuade others?"

"We know he's been courting alliances with Nysaia and Alloran, and his father was named a Champion of the Faith by the High Priest of Nadinia for his crusade against Lorne, so if Elric is as devout as his father he could potentially profit from their aid as well."

"But if he has their support, the other kingdoms that pay tribute to Nadinia might soon follow," Wolfram observed.

"Again, it's only noise," His Eminence reminded him. "We have Yozak checking on it to be safe."

Wolfram looked from the Great Sage to Yuuri with a dissatisfied frown. This was not the first time sensitive information had been kept from him and it would likely not be the last. Often he felt he'd been apprised of more of the kingdom's business before his marriage to Yuuri than he had been since. He understood that there were certain precautions and procedures that needed to be abided by, just as he knew that frequently Yuuri did not wish to trouble him with such matters when their time together was one of the few brief moments throughout the day when he could set his work aside and relax, but it did not ease Wolfram's troubled mind to think he'd gone from being in the thick of things to more of a background role.

He had struggled with that in the initial days. In many ways he continued to struggle with it even four years later. He had spent so long in active duty that the sudden change unsettled him. He felt irrelevant, forced into a life of dull domesticity that could never compare to the thrill and the dignity and the satisfaction he'd found in military life. There were times when he resented it, when he thought to go back to the days before he'd become little more than the gracious host to all of Yuuri's many guests.

There were reasons for it, of course, and Wolfram knew them all well. Not only was his safety paramount, but the monarchy itself simply had no room for two kings. It had never been structured that way and few people, if any, saw reason for that to change. His position as Prince Consort was no different than if Yuuri had chosen to take a Queen instead. He had a few extra privileges by virtue of being male in a male dominated society, but the brunt of the work and all of the ultimate decision-making was left to Yuuri and Yuuri alone.

Frequently, Wolfram felt like nothing more than a pretty decoration. He strived to accept it, did what he could to be supportive of Yuuri's endeavors with the influence he was allowed, looked for comfort and amusement in the hobbies he'd never had the time to appropriately appreciate as a soldier, but with Greta gone and his family either busy with work or traveling (in the case of his mother), the loneliness and the indignation had become his constant companions.

He didn't know what he'd expected during the years of the engagement, but it wasn't this.

He should have known. He should have realized. He should have remembered his father's frustrations as his mother's consort. He should have recognized that this was how it would be, should have considered it more carefully before throwing himself so enthusiastically into the engagement.

There was nothing to be enthusiastic about now.

Wolfram's stomach turned. He suddenly could not stand the sights and smells and sounds of the Great Hall and its boisterous crowd.

"Something wrong, von Bielefeld?"

His Eminence was looking at him with one of his secretive smiles, his eyes twinkling with mirth and knowledge.

"No, nothing," Wolfram said, tearing his eyes away from him. He did not appreciate the man's amusement, nor did he understand the reasons for it now.

"You haven't touched much of your food."

Wolfram's plate was indeed mostly full. As the servers had come around he'd absently eyed a few of the evening's dishes but found his appetite to be rather small. If it wasn't the smell of the food that got to him then it was the very thought of eating at all. He'd eventually satisfied himself with bread and soup, but the nausea and the distraction of his own mind had kept his consumption down to a few bites and less than a third of the bowl.

"Are you okay?" Yuuri asked. He looked surprised, as if he'd only now noticed.

Wolfram suspected that to be exactly the case.

"Yes, of course," he lied.

"Look, I didn't tell you about Massenia because-"

"I understand," Wolfram reassured him. He forced a bland smile and changed the subject before Yuuri could continue. "May I be excused? I wish to retire for the evening."

"Already? But you haven't even finished."

"I'm rather tired."

Yuuri stared at him, the surprise melting from his expression to be replaced with a mix of exasperation, disbelief, and concern. Wolfram thought Yuuri might deny his request and encourage him to stay and eat more, but eventually Yuuri's shoulders sagged as he sighed and frowned in resignation.

"Yeah, okay. You can go."

"You'll still be awhile?" Wolfram assumed.

"Yeah, don't wait up. Get some sleep."

Wolfram nodded and rose from his chair. As soon as the crowd of richly dressed men and women noticed, they rose in sycophantic respect, bowing and curtseying and murmuring their deference. Wolfram wondered how much of it was genuine.

He could never quite make himself believe they liked him.

After rounding the table, Wolfram took a breath to settle his weary mind and swallowed down the nausea that threatened to consume him as he walked stoically through the room. No one approached him. They muttered and stared and exchanged curious glances he did his best to ignore. They were all as self-serving as the last, alternatively fighting and allying with one another in their efforts to influence the King and gain power at court.

They wanted little to do with him that didn't have to do with getting closer to Yuuri, yet even as he made it to the door Wolfram could still feel a heavy gaze against his back.

He glanced once over his shoulder. Most of the courtiers had already returned to their meal. Only His Eminence was watching him, considering him with another little smile that grated on Wolfram's already frayed nerves.

He frowned and fled, desperate for an escape from the stifling pressure and confinement.

* * *

Sex was not all that Wolfram had hoped for.

Some nights he enjoyed it. When it was slow and sweet and he could stare into the ardent depths of Yuuri's eyes and pretend as if it meant something, he could find peace and pleasure and satisfaction in Yuuri's mouth and hands and the strong, insistent thrust of his pelvis. Those were the times that Wolfram let himself believe that there was more to this marriage than familiarity and convenience, and the sacrifices he'd made in seeing it through seemed inconsequential.

He wished he could say that Yuuri completed him, that they completed each other, that their life together was akin to the many love-clichés of old.

But that would be a lie.

Oh, there was love there, certainly. Even at his lowest, when the stress and the sense of worthlessness ate away at his fortitude and pride, the intense feelings he'd carried for Yuuri since that very first year still burned bright in Wolfram's chest, galvanizing a heart that had seen too much pain, abuse, and careless disregard. It was the only thing that kept him going on the days he felt like he had nothing left, when the castle seemed like nothing more than a cage and he the poor prisoner trapped within it, craving the sort of freedom he would never have again—if he'd ever had it to begin with.

Sometimes he even thought his feelings might be reciprocated. There were moments when Yuuri looked at him, really _looked_ at him, with such a profound passion and unadulterated affection that Wolfram thought it had to be love. No one had ever looked at him that way before. No one had ever cherished him for everything that he was. No one had ever made him _feel_ so much with just a single glance.

But there were other nights when a sort of darkness stole over his mind, and sex seemed like nothing more than another unpleasant duty.

The sunshine and melting snows of a premature spring should have lifted Wolfram's spirits.

Instead, his inexplicable melancholy grew ever worse.

"Not tonight," he said, curled upon the bed with Yuuri at his back.

Yuuri's hand caressed Wolfram's thigh as his lips sucked the long, pale column of his neck, leaving a distinct set of red marks to join the purple bruises that had not yet faded from the week before.

Wolfram abhorred them but would never say so for all the joy Yuuri seemed to take in marking his skin. He thought it such a trivial thing to mention when it was truly the least of his worries, though he took great pains to cover them in the daylight hours. The high collars of his jackets were generally sufficient, but there had been quite a few instances in which he'd had to enlist the assistance of his mother's flesh-colored powders.

"Why not?" Yuuri whispered.

His breath felt damp and warm against Wolfram's ear. It induced a shiver, which Yuuri took as a sign of pleasure, proceeding to suck Wolfram's earlobe into his mouth, but which really spoke of a particular disgust Wolfram had not quite shed from his youth.

It seemed some things were too deeply ingrained to ever vanish completely.

Wolfram had tried to see beyond Yuuri's human blood. There were countless qualities which Yuuri possessed that should have superseded something as universally trivial as race. When it came down to it, the only differences between the humans and the demons were that one race aged faster than the other and one could use magic.

Yuuri defied nature in that respect. His magic was stronger and more potent than anyone Wolfram had ever met. First it was water, arguably the most inherent of his powers, but when he mastered that it was earth, then healing and wind and fire. He used them all with skill. He need not even transform to tap into it anymore. Yuuri's magic was an incomparable force, so dominant and so present Wolfram almost thought he could feel the sparks of it as the tips of Yuuri's fingers made fleeting paths across his skin.

That power was proof enough that Yuuri was the rightful king, whatever his origins may have been. From the moment the Demon King had first emerged and ensnared him in his serpents' trap, Wolfram could no longer deny it. The demonstration had instilled in him a level of acceptance. It had helped him to overlook or at least tolerate the flaws that could not be expunged as easily.

For several years Wolfram had thought he'd overcome the aversion. It shouldn't matter whether Yuuri was full-human or full-demon or half of each or more of one than the other, not when Wolfram felt so strongly for him, not when the love he felt for Greta was the sort of love he'd always hoped his mother and father felt for him, not when Yuuri's family was so caring and accepting and _good_.

It had lasted only as long as it had taken for physical proof of Yuuri's humanity to present itself.

The changes had been minor at first—an extra inch in height, a slight broadening of the shoulders, a rough coat of hair along the lower face that hadn't even been necessary for Wolfram to see when Yuuri would remove it before he awoke. Then the inch had become two, three, four, five, six, seven, and Yuuri's previously lanky frame had filled out with firm and well-defined muscle. His shoulders grew wider, his chest grew thicker, his face lost its boyish roundness, and Wolfram could barely even recognize this tall, solid man as the naïve, clumsy idiot he'd once known, even if the eyes still held a trace of familiarity and the wide, winsome smile had seen little change.

Yuuri looked too old at twenty-nine. The stress of his work had the same effect on him as it'd had on Gwendal, etching premature lines into a face that should have still looked smooth. It made Wolfram feel young and slight and inadequate in comparison.

With Greta it had been different. After the first awkward morning with blood on the sheets, it had been easier to cope with her accent into adulthood. It had been a striking metamorphosis, the transition of this once sweet, precocious girl he'd called his own into a charming, vivacious woman ready to take on the world and rise to her fate as Grand Duchess of Zoracia. He felt nothing but pride in her, and sadness, too—that he could no longer be with her as he'd grown accustomed to, that she no longer needed him the way she used to.

Her race meant little to him, only that it would take her away long before he was ready to let her go.

But it mattered with Yuuri, much more than Wolfram liked to admit.

He thought it was because of the sex.

* * *

When he looked back on their wedding night, Wolfram experienced nothing but a surge of horror. It had settled so fixedly in his mind he could still remember it all quite distinctly, and there were nights when he felt particularly repulsed by the idea of intimacy that it replayed itself in such stark clarity it was like experiencing it all over again.

He sat on the bed, his stiff back supported by lush pillows, donned in the modest pink nightgown and royal undergarments that presented the only barrier between his body and the cool evening air. A fire burned in the large hearth, but its warmth did not reach him. He struggled to suppress a shiver as his mother pressed as reassuring kiss to his forehead and cupped his face in her hands, the most affection he'd received from her in years that wasn't clingy and overenthusiastic.

"Try to relax," she said, as if it were really so simple. "It won't take long."

Wolfram swallowed thickly but could not make himself speak. He nodded instead, grasped his courage and determination and tried to look more confident than he felt.

His mother left him with a gentle hug and a final lingering kiss, but when the door closed behind her Wolfram was not alone.

Consummation was everything in a royal marriage. Without it, the union could easily be invalidated and subsequently declared null and void. As such, the practice of blessing the marriage bed in the presence of witnesses had been put in place, so that no one would have grounds to dispute the union's validity. In a royal wedding, there was no better group of witnesses than the Great Sage and the Ten Aristocrats.

His Eminence's presence might distress Wolfram, standing by the windows in his characteristically cool and unconcerned manner, but the Aristocrats left him wholly mortified.

The fact that Grantz still operated without a representative and lowered the total to nine Aristocrats hardly matter when a third of the remaining members were family. Gwendal outright refused to look at him, kept his gaze fastened to the floor as his hands twitched and his face twisted into an uncomfortable scowl. Stoffel crossed his thick arms over his chest and moved his weight from foot to foot, examining the furniture and the fixtures as if to make sure none of it had changed since he'd had the unfortunate responsibility of bearing witness to the consummation of his sister's marriage to the human.

Of the three, only Waltorana looked at Wolfram, his face a mask of stoicism as his eyes burned with conviction.

'_Do this right,' _that look said. _'Do this well. The honor of your family depends upon it.'_

Wolfram was ashamed to admit he almost looked away. Only the stubborn resolve to prove himself worthy kept his eyes glued on his uncle.

The rest of the Aristocrats kept themselves as detached as possible. Gunter looked mildly disturbed, wringing his hands together and stealing furtive glances at his companions. Anissina's brother, Densham, didn't display his usual smile. He stood near Gwendal and Gunter, looking vaguely agitated. Del Kierson von Wincott appeared to be the most comfortable, but that was likely due to the fact that he had his back discretely turned. The remaining three—Lord von Radford, Lord von Gyllenhaal, and Lady von Rochfort—seemed as indifferent as it was possible to be under the circumstances.

The only thing Wolfram could think about when he looked at them was how Lord von Gyllenhaal had once had the gall to spank him. That the very same man would now be present at his wedding night inspired the briefest flash of indignation before the rage puttered out and he was left with no more than sheer terror.

He was a virgin.

That did not mean Wolfram had no understanding of the mechanics of what would happen that night. Sex had never been covered in any of his formal lectures, but a young man of his upbringing could not possibly remain innocent when one considered his mother's loose habits and his many years of military service. Soldiers talked, sometimes in graphic detail. They were also not known for their discretion during long campaigns away from home, nor had many of them deemed it necessary to mind what they did and said around him.

All it had taken was one drunken knight of Voltaire shamelessly flirting and running his mouth when Wolfram was 67 for him to learn the basics of intercourse. The rest he'd gleaned through books covertly taken from the library, then left in random places around the castle in the hopes that no one would trace them back to him.

The idea of sex did not disturb him so much as the fact that there were people present—some of them family—to listen and to inspect the sheets once the act was done. The only reason he'd never been intimate with anyone before was because he'd never deemed anyone worthy of that kind of invasion into his privacy. Yuuri qualified only by virtue of the fact that they were now married and consummation was imminent. Otherwise, he would have gladly gone many more years without bothering.

He was not the sort to seek companionship. He had no lovers, few friends, and relied mostly on his family and fellow soldiers for company. For the greater part of his life this had satisfied him well enough. He had no time and no desire for the complications of a relationship. Not until Yuuri did he begin to consider the merits of having something more.

The doors opened with a loud creak to herald the arrival of Wolfram's new husband, still dressed in his wedding attire—black, of course, with gold cords and medals of honor and fringed epaulets that accentuated the breadth of his shoulders. Wolfram caught a brief glimpse of Conrart with him, one comforting hand on Yuuri's back, before the doors closed and his second brother disappeared behind them.

He would wait and stand guard, Wolfram knew, in case Yuuri needed the support when it was over.

He wouldn't, yet few of their attendants considered that there might be a reversal of roles. Even Wolfram assumed Yuuri would be the first to falter, for at twenty-five Yuuri had never touched him in anything but a platonic manner. There had been a few instances of holding hands (mostly for comfort) and just as many occasions in which a hug had seemed appropriate (in relief or sadness), but their only kiss had been possession-induced, and after his first few failed attempts at seduction Wolfram had stopped trying to encourage more from his wayward fiancé.

Once the door was behind him, Yuuri struggled to keep himself composed. Wolfram could see it in his face. Yuuri did not frown or smile, but kept his lips pressed firmly together, his jaw stiff and his back rigid. Only the eyes—it was always the eyes—revealed the measure of Yuuri's anxiety. His gaze was too hard, too focused, as if he were stealing himself for what neither of them would now no longer be able to avoid.

Wolfram watched him draw closer, meeting Yuuri's eyes with grim determination. They had not spoken of this, though both of them had known it would occur, and Wolfram now thought about how foolish it had been not to have that discussion, however uncomfortable it might have been.

Perhaps it would have been better if they had, if they'd been more prepared for this.

Yuuri stopped at the far corner of the bed, nervously touched the bedpost, and then found the cord holding the curtains open. He untied it slowly, dropped the cord and tassel carelessly to the floor, and when the curtains fell closed, half of the door was obstructed from Wolfram's view.

The next set of curtains concealed the Great Sage and the Aristocrats.

It was all the privacy they would have. Wolfram hoped it would be enough, that he could hold onto his slipping courage until they were done. It would not he long, he told himself. It would not be long and then the Aristocrats would leave, and he and Yuuri could spend the rest of their evening alone.

When three curtains had been untied from their respective posts, Yuuri slowly, cautiously climbed onto the bed, watching Wolfram with the same forcibly impersonal face he'd worn when he'd entered the room. Wolfram tried to smile reassuringly, reached out for one of Yuuri's hands and squeezed it tightly. Yuuri shifted closer and reached across him to shut the remaining curtain. Then they sat together, Wolfram in his place against the pillows and Yuuri's kneeling in front of him, straddling his legs.

"It'll be okay," Yuuri whispered, and the tone of his voice made it clear that his comment was intended to reassure them both.

He spoke softly enough that the Aristocrats might not have been able to hear him, but when one of them released an anxious cough Wolfram could only think that it sounded like Gunter, and the mortification grew ever stronger.

It must have been evident on his face, in the way his eyes flicked briefly toward the closed curtains at the end of the bed.

"Don't think about them," Yuuri said, squeezing the hand still held in his grasp.

Wolfram swallowed in the hopes that his voice would remain steady as he asked, "Have can I not?"

When Yuuri smiled it looked like pity. It probably was. Yuuri could sympathize with the situation since he was in the midst of it as well, but he benefited from having no family to witness his first foray into lovemaking. Perhaps if Shori were required to attend, Yuuri would have been much less calm.

He wasn't exactly calm now of course, but he seemed more adept at ignoring the occasional cough or clearing of the throat that announced the Aristocrats' discomfort and impatience.

"We'll make it quick," Yuuri replied. His composure slipped for a moment as he nervously licked his lips.

Wolfram could do nothing but nod—a short, jerky movement that probably gave more away than he would like.

Yuuri's expression softened. He looked as if he would say something else but seemed to have run out of words. He opened and closed his mouth twice before giving up. Then he squeezed Wolfram's hand again, leaned in, and kissed him.

Wolfram did not ask if Yuuri had done this before and Yuuri did not offer the information willingly. Once or twice Wolfram had considered that Yuuri might seek his pleasures elsewhere, especially during the years when their engagement seemed like nothing more than a farce. Sometimes he thought it likely. Yuuri had such an affinity for people, such an easy openness that it was not difficult for Wolfram to imagine him sating his developing sexual appetite without much fear or embarrassment, especially as Yuuri grew older and maturity came in the place of innocence.

But he heard no rumors of indiscretion, saw no proof of it with his own eyes, and so he could only assume that Yuuri was every bit as inexperienced as he was, though perhaps the slightest bit more knowledgeable. Earth was home to such a vast array of information this world had yet to attain.

The kisses were not as comforting as Yuuri might have intended to make them. Try as he might to do otherwise, to focus on the moment and the kiss and the fact that finally, _finally _they were together—as he thought they should have been all along—Wolfram could not pretend as if they were without an audience.

For much of it, Wolfram strove for a detachment he was only somewhat successful at achieving. He went from sitting to lying on his back without much of a thought for how it had happened, and saw Yuuri above him as if through a cloud, but he could feel his heart beating faster in his chest, loud in his ears, and all of his other senses seemed to sharpen more than usual. He could feel little tingles across his skin as Yuuri's hands slipped beneath his nightgown; he could smell wine, and all the mingling of scents he'd come to associate with Yuuri—the smell of ink and parchment, of sweat over citrusy soap, of fresh dirt and spring grass, and something spicy and warm that reminded Wolfram of a bright summer sun.

He watched with a sort of muted interest as Yuuri pulled back long enough to tug off his formal boots, unfasten his jacket, shirt, and pants, and slip them off one by one until he was naked.

Wolfram had seen Yuuri nude countless times. They bathed and dressed together without much concern for what the other thought. Wolfram had seen too many soldiers in various states of undress to find Yuuri any different, and Yuuri had spent years in public baths and some place called a "locker-room" where Earthen boys apparently changed in front of one another all the time. The sight of bare skin on a man, especially one he was familiar with to the extent that he was familiar with Yuuri, did not trouble Wolfram as much as it would have had he been faced with a naked woman.

But his wedding night was no ordinary night, and suddenly Wolfram could not disregard certain facts he'd once been able to see as insignificant.

Yuuri was naked and looming above him, taller and heavier than he'd been ten years ago. Wolfram stared at his round shoulders, at the muscles of his chest, at the hair under his arms and trailing from his stomach to his groin, which was hard and swollen. Wolfram had never seen it that way before. It seemed alien to him when he'd only ever seen it harmless and flaccid, and he couldn't decide what it meant—if Yuuri truly wanted him or if he'd found some other way to achieve his current state.

The tender kisses and brief caresses had only brought Wolfram to half-hardness, but when he looked at Yuuri as something strange and foreign, and when he heard someone shift beyond the curtains, Wolfram's budding arousal waned. Yuuri frowned in concern when he saw his face. His hands stroked Wolfram's hip and waist, his thigh, one thumb gently sliding over the soft skin on the inside. Yuuri's weight returned on him, his mouth trailing wetly along Wolfram's neck, to the sensitive area where ear met jaw, but Wolfram's mind had already taken a sober turn toward territory he had not waded through in years.

Yuuri was all suntanned skin and black hair and a face just beginning to line too early—not the awkward teenager Wolfram had always imagined in his fantasies of marriage, but a man. A man bearing down on him, pressing him to the mattress, a man whose coloring meant "power" and whose age meant "human."

And then Wolfram could only think of Yuuri as the two things he'd never seen him as in their private moments together—and human and a king.

To be with a king was empowering—to be the center of his attention, to hold his pleasure and his satisfaction in hand, to be everything to him that no one else would ever be—but it was overridden, usurped of its position by a sudden eruption of disgust from a hateful place within him Wolfram had thought long gone.

It was like one of his childhood nightmares, violent dreams of human attacks on the castle, his mother ripped away from him, his eldest brother defeated, and Conrart consorting with the guilty party, only now the violence and blood would come in a different way, and Wolfram would be the only one to suffer it.

His nightgown was pushed up to his waist, his undergarments carefully untied as his legs were nudged apart. Yuuri kept his mouth on his neck, licking and nipping and nuzzling the skin in a way that should have been affectionate but only made Wolfram feel like he was being mauled by a wild animal—and a human was no better than a wild animal, a voice from his youth rose to poisonously whisper.

Preoccupied, Yuuri did not seem to see the struggle Wolfram was going through, the fight for his mind to distinguish between "Yuuri" and "human." Yuuri's breathing was labored in anticipation, his body slick with sweat. At some point this had become more than just another duty. Yuuri wanted. Wolfram could feel it in the trembling of Yuuri's body as he made the effort to restrain himself, in the needy groans and greedy kisses and the assertive press of Yuuri's hardness against him.

Wolfram's breathing was just as erratic, but for different reasons. A hand slipped behind him. A finger slick with what Wolfram could only assume was oil prodded at the tight ring of muscle hidden in the cleft of his buttocks, gentle at first before it grew more insistent, breaching him, pushing and twisting and stretching his insides to withstand the larger intrusion that was soon to come.

"Relax," Yuuri mumbled, his voice soft but strained, his mouth sliding down to Wolfram's heaving chest.

Wolfram nodded as if he would try.

As if he possibly could.

It seemed to go on forever. Yuuri tried to offer comfort and Wolfram let him believe it helped, but he could not reciprocate any of Yuuri's advances, and when Yuuri's hardness took the place of his fingers something in Wolfram's mind shattered.

His head spun and his heart raced. He could feel little tingles of something that wasn't pleasure shooting up through his extremities, as his chest constricted and breathing seemed nigh impossible. The terror was the worst of it, all of the revulsion and fear he thought would never plague him again. It left him grasping at the sheets, staring with wide eyes at the canopy as if it held his salvation. His body was too rigid, too tense for pleasure. Each of Yuuri's thrusts ached and burned.

The only point of redemption was Yuuri's pleasure. That he could find enjoyment in something he'd always claimed to be against would later encourage Wolfram to try again, to move beyond his metaphorical demons and find release.

He hardly noticed when Yuuri's came—felt something warm and damp inside, heard a long, deep groan, smelled sweat and musk, but he could not acknowledge that it had ended when he still felt utterly repulsed by the violation.

After a few minutes that felt like hours, Yuuri kissed the side of Wolfram's face and clambered off of him. He whispered soothing words into Wolfram's ear, brushed his hair off of his clammy forehead, pulled his nightgown back down, and helped him move to the other side of the bed where the sheets were cleaner and he could recover while the rest of the ordeal was done without him.

Slowly, Wolfram came back to himself. His surroundings returned to focus and the anxiety began to ebb, leaving him angry and embarrassed and wishing he were anywhere but here. Wolfram winced as he turned onto his side, curling up under the blanket Yuuri spread over him, and he grit his teeth against the ugly thoughts still swirling around in his head.

Semen leaked from his backside to streak his thighs, wet and sticky.

Vile, human semen.

One of the curtains opened but Wolfram had his back turned and could not see who stood there. There was a pause as the sheets were examined—and Wolfram had no doubt that there was blood on them—then Gunter mumbled something and Wolfram heard ten pairs of feet shuffle along the floor on their way out of the room.

The mattress shifted when Yuuri returned. Lips descended to the side of Wolfram's neck—this night marking the start of Yuuri's fascination with it. From that point on, Wolfram would always be able to judge Yuuri's intentions by the manner in which he kissed his neck.

For now it was gentle and soothing. Yuuri nuzzled Wolfram with a form of affection he'd never shown before, and rubbed his hand up and down Wolfram's arm in a manner that was meant to be consoling.

"Was it bad?" Yuuri asked.

He sounded sad, disappointed, like he felt as if it were his fault that Wolfram's first experience had not been as gratifying as it should have been.

Wolfram didn't wish to upset him.

"No, I…" he trailed off, searched for something to say, because it wasn't Yuuri's fault he'd felt the way he had. Wolfram was angry at himself for reacting that way, humiliated that it had gotten the best of him.

He thought he should be over his prejudices by now. Not only had he acknowledged such thoughts were unfounded years ago, but this was _Yuuri_ he'd just been intimate with, and nothing—not upbringing or magic or blood—changed the fact that Wolfram _loved_ him.

Yuuri kissed his shoulder. "They won't be in here next time," he said, assuming—for lack of any other explanation—that Wolfram's discomfort had stemmed from the publicity of the event.

And some of it had.

But it wasn't the only issue.

"It'll get better," Yuuri promised. "I'll make it better."

Wolfram swallowed and nodded and tried with all his might not to dread it happening again.

* * *

It did get better.

Their second time happened more naturally, more than a month later without encouragement from any outside parties, and Wolfram was able to successfully ignore the malevolent whispers of his youth. Yuuri was sweet and gentle. He kissed him with passion, touched him with reverence, and took his time exploring Wolfram's body, finding all the places that made Wolfram tremble and moan. Then when they joined together Wolfram could focus on more delightful things—Yuuri's warm skin beneath his hands, Yuuri's mouth muttering words that sounded like love, Yuuri's dark, dark eyes boring into his own.

It wasn't perfect. There were times when Wolfram overcame his objections and times when he did not. For the most part Yuuri was patient and kind and understanding, though he did not know the many things that crossed Wolfram's mind when they were in bed together. Yuuri only showed his irritation sparingly, when weeks had gone by without Wolfram agreeing to more.

"I'm not in the mood," Wolfram risked saying at present, knowing what sort of reaction his comment was likely to receive.

It had been two months since their last night together, not since mid-January. A busy work schedule on Yuuri's part could be blamed for some of it, as there simply hadn't been time between paperwork and meetings and late nights in the office. Even still, Wolfram would accept some of the blame. If he was not fully asleep by the time Yuuri returned to their bedchamber those nights he worked well into the evening, Wolfram had taken to pretending. For all of Yuuri's frustrations, he was never forceful, issuing only a mumbled complaint before giving up and settling for sleep.

True to form, Yuuri grumbled a response. "Why not?"

"Do I need a reason?" Wolfram asked.

"Yeah, it'd be better than no explanation at all."

"I don't feel well," Wolfram said.

Yuuri scoffed and pulled his mouth away. The bed jostled as he rolled onto his back. "You need to see Gisela," he told him.

His voice was not quite firm enough to be a command yet, though Wolfram knew Yuuri could very well make it an order if he felt it was necessary.

"I will not see Gisela for refusing to have sex with you," Wolfram argued.

"Not because of _that_," Yuuri said. "Because you don't feel well. Something's wrong, Wolfram, and you can't keep pretending like you're okay."

"The illness will pass."

"It's not just about you being sick," Yuuri countered. He rolled again, and grabbed Wolfram's shoulder to gently turn him towards him.

Yuuri looked sad, his face awash with worry. Wolfram kept his own expression distant and stony, the better to pretend as if he hadn't noticed that something wasn't quite right himself.

"You're different now, Wolf," Yuuri observed. "You never seem like you're happy anymore. It's been getting worse since Christmas and it kills me. I wish you'd tell me why, if it's me or if there's something else bothering you. You know I'll fix it if I can. You know I'll do anything…"

The sentiment made Wolfram feel guilty. His face fell into a miserable frown.

"I…" he hesitated to explain himself. "It's only that… I'm very tired..."

He knew that Yuuri could see through the lie.

"You know that's not everything," Yuuri said.

Of course Wolfram knew it, but he wasn't going to admit it when doing so would cause them even more troubles. How could he tell him the issue lied with Yuuri's humanity? That wasn't something that could be fixed or changed to suit him better.

"I'll be alright," Wolfram tried to reassure him instead. "Trust me. This will pass."

"And if it doesn't?" Yuuri challenged.

"It will, Yuuri."

"But if it doesn't, you'll tell me?"

Wolfram paused before nodding slowly. "Yes, of course," he said.

Yuuri didn't look as if he believed him.

"And if I tell you to again, you'll see Gisela?"

"I…"

He wanted to say "no," but a look from Yuuri quelled the response.

"Yes, alright," he said, before Yuuri could change his mind and make it an order.

Yuuri stared at him seriously for a long while, as if he were trying to look into him and discover what the problem was himself. When the effort proved fruitless, Yuuri heaved a sigh and settled back down, slipping an arm around Wolfram's waist. As Wolfram turned back onto his side, Yuuri affectionately nuzzled his neck.

"I wish you wouldn't hide things from me," Yuuri said.

Wolfram did not wish for the conversation to continue. He shifted just enough to make himself comfortable, then closed his eyes and pretend to sleep. It was the coward's way out and he cursed himself for it, but he could not bring himself to hurt Yuuri by telling him the truth.

He'd handled it on his own for four years.

He could handle more.

* * *

Wolfram ended up seeing Gisela by mid-March.

It was not by choice, though it was not the result of a direct order either—at least, not one meant expressly for him.

Patrols and reconnaissance missions might be out of the question now that he was Prince Consort, but Wolfram could thank Yuuri for at least allowing a small piece of his former life by permitting him to continue his drills and see to the training of his own soldiers—a few of whom had been promoted to the Royal Guard upon his marriage. However little use the others intended for him to have for a sword these days, Wolfram enjoyed the practice. It was one of the only things keeping him from losing his sanity to the carefully guarded life he now led.

Unfortunately, the scrapes, bumps, and bruises he would have laughed off and looked at with satisfaction as a sign of his hard work were no longer met with as much amusement from his personal guard, who seemed to take their duties much more seriously now that he was consort of the King.

That wasn't to say they hadn't taken their duties seriously to begin with—Wolfram would not have tolerated such lax behavior—but these days they treated him with an additional reverence and an exaggerated devotion Wolfram deemed highly unnecessary.

A day that started well ended poorly. What had begun as an exercise in fun became an overcautious effort after a scraped knee, a few minor bruises, and a sudden nosebleed caused his soldiers to lose their nerve prematurely.

"You're all pathetic," Wolfram grumbled.

He was escorted down the halls toward the infirmary by three of his men— Sir Hugh Wieland, Sir Philip Capet, and Sir Rupert Bleddyn, his former Lieutenant and current Captain of the Prince's Guard. Philip held a monogrammed handkerchief to Wolfram's nose as if Wolfram could hardly be bothered to dirty his fingers by soaking the mess up on his own.

"You were only recently indisposed, Your Majesty," Hugh explained, taking up the rear while Philip and Rupert flanked each side.

Wolfram's only means of escape was forward, and that would do absolutely nothing but lead him directly to the infirmary doors.

"My recent illness has nothing whatsoever to do with a bloody nose," Wolfram replied. He leveled Philip with a harsh glare and smacked his hand away before grabbing the handkerchief and seeing to his nose himself.

"My apologies, Your Majesty," Philip said.

"I thought we agreed 'Lord Wolfram' was still acceptable," Wolfram said.

"You are no longer a lord," Rupert pointed out.

He was the more serious of the three, older than Wolfram by less than a year—though with the manner in which demons aged it made little difference—and a more reserved sort than Philip and Hugh. Rupert put great stock in the hierarchical structure of society, as well as his place in it. He more than anyone had treated Wolfram's rise to Prince Consort with the deference it deserved, whether or not Wolfram wanted or expected it.

"Yes," Wolfram allowed, "and you never let me forget it."

"Do you wish to, Your Majesty?" Rupert asked.

"Would you let me if I did?"

Rupert's frown was all the answer he needed.

"Your concern is not warranted, nor do I require an escort," Wolfram argued.

"If we did not escort you, you would not see Miss Gisela," Philip countered with a knowing smile.

"Perhaps you should consider that I do not wish to see her," Wolfram said. "Am I not your Prince?"

"Of course you are, Your Majesty," Hugh agreed.

"And do you not heed my orders?"

"So long as your orders are not exceeded by another," Rupert said.

Wolfram did not have to question the meaning of that statement. There were only two people in the kingdom whose orders could override his own now that he was husband of the King, and as the Great Sage had never shown much care for Wolfram's personal health, he was left with only one other explanation.

"Yuuri's been to see you then," he assumed.

Rupert didn't even have the grace to look ashamed. But then he wouldn't, of course. No matter how strong his loyalties to Wolfram might be, he could not defy a direct order from the King himself.

"His Majesty implored us to see that you were given the proper medical attention should you exhibit further abnormal behavior," Rupert explained.

"'Abnormal behavior'?" Wolfram scoffed. "What part of my behavior has been abnormal? A nosebleed? Don't be ridiculous! This is completely unnecessary!"

"It is better to be overcautious than to risk your good health."

"Forgive us, Your Majesty," Philip said. He continued to smile as if he found Wolfram's insistent denial entertaining.

Wolfram had no doubt that he did.

He would have struggled if the resulting scuffle wouldn't have been completely undignified. He was fairly certain no amount of effort would be enough to escape from them. He was outnumbered three to one, and while Wolfram would not have shied away from the odds under different circumstances, his usual opponents typically weren't his own highly skilled soldiers.

He waited until they'd come to a stop two yards from the infirmary doors before making his final stand.

"You'll all be punished for this," he warned them.

"We'll be punished if we don't carry out His Majesty's orders," Hugh pointed out.

"And whose punishment do you imagine will be worse?" Wolfram wondered. "Yuuri's or mine?"

Hugh and Philip actually seemed to consider the comment, but Rupert would not be swayed.

"We will not defy the King," he said determinedly.

Hugh and Philip immediately fell into line again with identical nods.

Wolfram turned to glare at them all, putting his back to the door. "I'll revoke your commissions," he threatened.

"His Majesty will reinstate them," Rupert calmly replied.

"I'll set you to work scrubbing out the stables."

"His Majesty will have better need of us, I'm sure."

"And by 'better need' you mean herding me around like cattle, of course."

"His Majesty is simply expressing his concern, Your Majesty," Philip tried.

"This is of no concern!" Wolfram announced, waving the bloody handkerchief in Philip's face.

"If it is of no concern, seeing a healer seems to be the simplest method of proving yourself correct," Rupert argued.

Wolfram frowned heavily and glared at the truth in Rupert's logic, yet he was no keener to visit Gisela than he'd been when they'd ushered him from the training grounds, especially not for something so insignificant as a scraped knee and a bloody nose.

"Fine," he eventually agreed. "I'll see her."

Hugh and Philip instantly relaxed.

Wolfram intended to use the opportunity to his advantage and moved to force his way through them, but Rupert's careful hand on his upper arm stalled him. The other two men recovered quickly and closed ranks, conducting him back through the infirmary doors. Wolfram sputtered and hissed the entire way, stopping only when they entered to the wide eyes and startled faces of the infirmary patients and resident healers.

The infirmary itself consisted of one large room lined with narrow beds on each side, with a few doors leading off to storage closets, offices, and private rooms for those individuals whose ailments required them to be quarantined. Most of the beds were currently unoccupied, save for a few here and there which hosted soldiers whose conditions were too severe for them to return to the barracks.

Wolfram's visits to the infirmary were few and far between. Even as a soldier he'd received extra privileges by virtue of his birth. As the Prince Consort, as well as the son of a queen and an aristocrat family, healers were typically called to see him in the privacy of his own room.

Gisela was tending to a man with a broken leg three beds down the aisle, but she paused in her ministrations as soon as she noticed Wolfram and his men. Gently she adjusted her patient's blanket, whispered something quiet and kind to him that seemed as if it were meant to be reassuring, and called one of the other healers to assist him as she left his bedside and approached her new target.

Wolfram straightened his back and stared at her defiantly. He had been pushed around enough without allowing such behavior from her. His stance seemed to have some sort of an effect on her, as she paused in her approach to stare at him oddly, her eyes moving from his face to travel halfway down his body before she stepped forward to close the distance between them.

"Is something ailing you, Your Majesty?" she asked. The tone of her voice was strange, as if she had seen or sensed something that surprised her.

Not wanting to waste any more of his time on this nonsense, Wolfram simply said, "I have a bloody nose."

He brought the handkerchief to his face again as if to demonstrate his point.

"Yes, I can see that," Gisela said as she pulled her eyes back up to his face.

"And also a scraped knee," he added.

"Is that all?"

"I imagine my men would like me to add 'a few bruises' to the list."

"Nothing more than I'd expect from a training exercise," Gisela observed.

Wolfram allowed himself to feel smug and looked at his men with an imperiously raised brow when Rupert said, "I sensed something strange."

"'Strange'?" Wolfram wondered, thrown off by the sudden comment. "What strange? You never mentioned anything about something strange!"

"Please elaborate," Gisela said.

"It was after His Majesty's nose began to bleed," Rupert explained. "I meant to heal him and felt… something. It was only for a moment. But it was very strong, like a wave of raw energy."

Wolfram waited impatiently as Gisela took her time scrutinizing him. When she seemed to decide upon something, she turned around and motioned for him to follow.

"There's a private examination room right this way."

Feeling as if he didn't have much of a choice in the matter, Wolfram stepped after her and followed behind as slowly as his men would allow. They fell into position around him again, as if to guard him from any potential danger presented by the ill, injured, or otherwise indisposed occupants of the castle infirmary.

As soon as they had all entered the private examination room and Rupert shut the door, Gisela pivoted on her heel and guided Wolfram over to the room's narrow cot.

"Is this level of force really necessary?" Wolfram asked.

"Have you been feeling ill at all recently, Your Majesty?" Gisela asked rather than answering his question.

Wolfram eyed her suspiciously and gingerly sat himself on the edge of the cot. "In February, yes," he replied.

"Only in February? How long would you say your illness lasted?"

"I don't know. I didn't care to keep track," Wolfram admitted. He tried to look back over the first few months of the year in an attempt to pinpoint an exact start date, but all he came up with was a vague idea. "I might have felt a bit under the weather for parts of January, but it was nothing like February."

"What were your symptoms?"

Rupert answered for him. "Nausea, fatigue, irritability…"

"Nothing out of the ordinary there," Gisela observed.

Wolfram could not help but think it was meant as a dig toward his behavior and weak seafaring disposition.

"Are you experiencing any of those symptoms now, Your Majesty?"

"Perhaps a bit of fatigue," he allowed, "but the nausea is mostly gone."

"Was it particularly strong at certain times of the day?" she wondered.

"In the morning and early afternoon. Occasionally in the evenings depending on what was being served for dinner."

"You're experiencing sensitivity to smell," Gisela said rather than asked.

"The smell of meat makes me feel ill," Wolfram replied.

"Anything else?"

"Some vegetables... eggs... no fruit that I know of..."

"I see…"

Whatever Gisela "saw" was completely lost to Wolfram, though Rupert and Philip exchanged a curious glance. Hugh, at least, seemed not to have picked up on whatever they were silently conferring about, looking around as if the answers were hiding in the corners of the room.

"Would you permit me to have a look at you, Your Majesty?" Gisela requested.

Wolfram rolled his eyes and made himself a little more comfortable on the cot. "I don't see what choice I have," he said.

Gisela did not look amused. In fact, she looked very _un-_amused as she drew closer to him with her hands extended toward his torso. They glowed a soft green as she utilized her magic. Whatever she felt caused her expression to take on an even more serious look.

"Are you and His Majesty intimate with one another on a regular basis, Your Majesty?" she asked.

Wolfram sputtered and flushed and glared at Gisela for her lack of tact. "You speak too boldly and far above you station!" he warned her.

Gisela showed him a level stare. "These questions must sometimes be asked to determine the presence of specific conditions."

"You'll forgive me if I fail to understand."

"Pregnancy, Your Majesty."

The examination room experienced a sudden silence penetrated only by the click of boot heels on the floor as Hugh shifted uncomfortably.

Wolfram opened his mouth and stammered in his attempt to refute such a ridiculous notion, but the comment seemed to have dredged up a particular memory from the depths of his brain—he and Yuuri on Earth during the time of Christ's Mass and the creepy, fat old man with the bag of presents. They'd gone to bed, snuggled close, kissed in the darkness. After their first few awkward steps into a sexual relationship, Yuuri had introduced him to an Earthen device he called a "condom." They'd used them frequently since then, both because Wolfram couldn't stand the mess and also because Yuuri insisted they prevented pregnancy.

He also insisted they lessened the sensation and would occasionally convince Wolfram to tolerate sex without it.

They hadn't used one at Christ's Mass.

"I don't… understand…" he said.

"It's really very simple, Your Majesty. I'm fairly certain I have no need to explain it to you."

An explanation was not needed, no, and Wolfram shook his head to make that implicit, but the shock of it all numbed his brain until he could hardly even think in a logical manner.

"That's not… no, that can't be…"

"I assure you, Your Majesty, that it is both possible and probable. I could sense a change in you the moment you set foot in the infirmary, an additional energy signature quite common in pregnancies resulting in a child with magical abilities, especially in cases in which the parents are both particularly powerful."

"But I…"

"Sir Bleddyn has only minor healing abilities and even he was able to sense it when he attempted to heal you."

By the door, Rupert and Wolfram's other two guards shifted together and exchanged a few more nervous glances.

"I can't…"

"If you and His Majesty are indeed intimate with one another on a regular basis, it was only a matter of time," Gisela said. "You'll be at your peak childbearing years for the next century, though judging by the timing of your symptoms the child appears to be growing at the more rapid rate of a human. You're likely well into your third month."

If Gisela expected her clinical explanation to console or reassure him at all, she was sorely mistaken. She'd already unintentionally said the wrong thing.

Human. The child was human.

A human child was growing inside of him, stealing his blood and his energy and the nutrients that sustained him, sucking him dry like an offensive parasite. The child of his human husband, created from his husband's human seed, the very seed that leaked from his body each night Yuuri convinced him to forgo the human preventative measures from his human world.

Briefly a lovely, joyful face flashed in his mind, and Wolfram thought of Greta, of her laughter and tears and the many days he'd spent watching her grow up too fast, taking her in as a ten-year-old and setting her free eight years later, much too soon for the demon instincts that told him she should still be young and small.

And he missed her. Oh, how he missed her, that human girl who'd once threatened Yuuri's life, who they'd loved and raised together like a family before they truly were one.

But this child wasn't Greta. It would never be Greta. He had not embraced it with sympathy. It had taken root in him by no choice of his own, stuck inside of him until it was removed as he was stuck inside the castle.

"I don't want this," he said quietly, his voice no more than a whisper.

Gisela frowned at him, part indignant and part concerned. "May I examine you further, Your Majesty?" she tried, inching one of her hands closer to his stomach.

Wolfram slapped it away. "You may not!"

"I only want to make sure-"

"You've done quite enough," Wolfram said, cutting her off. He wanted to leave. He _needed_ to leave, to get out, to escape from all of their concerned faces and shut himself away alone.

"If you would please inform me how long I can expect to be in this condition," he added, trying to be as curt and as matter-of-fact as possible in the hopes of controlling the emotions beginning to roil within him.

"Human pregnancies typically last nine months, Your Majesty, though depending on the age and general health of the-"

"And is there any chance that its development will become less rapid in time?"

"It's certainly possible given that you are a pure blooded demon, but most children of half-human descent come into their demon heritage later in life. If I remember correctly, Lord Weller-"

"That is all the information I require," Wolfram announced, standing from the cot to force his way around her.

"Your Majesty, I insist upon doing a full examination," Gisela said.

"And _I _insist that you return to your duties and allow me to return to mine."

"Human pregnancies can put quite a strain on the body. At your age-"

"You said I was already in my peak childbearing years," Wolfram reminded her.

"Yes, therefore pregnancy under these circumstances is not surprising, but there are countless side effects and potential complications of a human pregnancy in someone of your age. When you consider that you're not even fully grown-"

"I'll be sure to keep that in mind."

"If you don't take care of yourself or seek the proper medical aid, you could miscarry!" Gisela all but shouted, stopping him in his tracks before he could shove his way through his guards. "You could experience early labor, at risk to your child's life _and_ yours. This may affect your growth. It could cause serious medical issues if you refuse treatment, and with your previous medical history-"

"There is nothing in my medical history that should be a cause for concern."

Gisela rushed to argue. "Your heart has never been the same since the boxes were opened!"

That gave Wolfram pause. He stopped long enough to glance at Gisela over his shoulder, his frown still firmly in place.

"Your concern has been noted," he said. "Now, if you'll excuse me… I have more pressing matters to attend to, and as you have already deemed my remaining ailments of no consequence, I see little reason to linger."

Gisela looked as if she would like to argue more, but even she knew when the effort would prove fruitless. She returned his frown with one of her own and crossed her arms over her chest defiantly. Wolfram turned away from her before she could say anything else and burst through the door of the private room to stalk back through the main infirmary.

Rupert, Philip, and Hugh followed him out into the hall. Philip's face was white with shock and concern, while Hugh's face flushed with a sort of discomfort after having been witness to Wolfram's personal affairs. Only Rupert looked calm, though Wolfram did not find this to be surprising at all.

He rounded on them as soon as the infirmary doors were shut, glaring them into submission before they could even open their mouths.

"You will repeat none of this to Yuuri, do you understand?" he demanded. "_None of this_!"

"Your Majesty-" Rupert began.

"I said, 'do you understand'?" Wolfram deftly interrupted him, his voice hard and cold as ice.

The three guards exchanged another look. Eventually, Rupert answered for them with an obedient nod.

"Return to your duties," Wolfram said. "And if I hear a word of this from you or from anyone else, you will all be disciplined accordingly."

"Yes, Your Majesty," Philip replied. He was soon echoed by Rupert and Hugh—Rupert somewhat grudgingly.

Wolfram left them with a final warning glare, brushing passed them as he lifted the handkerchief he still carried back up to his nose to stem the flow of any lingering blood. He marched down the halls of the castle with hardly a word or even so much as a simple acknowledgement for anyone he might have passed, making a quick escape to the royal bedchamber.

His knees buckled when he entered, his heart racing as his chest tightened with panic.

He threw the bloody handkerchief onto the floor with an angry shout and a heated curse.

This was wrong. Everything. All of it. The wedding, the sex, and now this. He was a soldier, not a prince or a husband or a parent. Everything he knew was suited to a life in the military, to defending the king and bringing honor to their country.

He didn't know how to be anything else.

Part of him didn't _want_ to be anything else.

Wolfram stumbled to the bed, collapsed against the side of it, clutched the blanket in his hands and gasped for air.

Deep within him, so small and feeble he could not yet feel it, tiny human limbs thrashed about.

It would change his life forever.

**TBC...**


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Kyou Kara Maou or any of its characters.

**Beta-ed by:** G. Much of the plot was also devised in conjunction with her. I owe her my deepest and heartfelt thanks for all her years of service and friendship.

**Warnings:** Mpreg (and resulting pregnancy issues; this chapter in particular features talk of possible abortion), angst, depression, language, adult themes, dark themes, religious themes, racial issues (demon and human), violence, blood, torture, sexual content, sexual content of dubious consent, non-consensual sex, original characters (because using the same old villains gets boring), character death (most likely minor, but I have considered offing a major character or two that is not Yuuri or Wolfram). Various other warnings may apply at a later date. I will do my best to update the list as need be. It is very likely that this fic will be quite dark in nature. I apologize if that is not to your liking.

**Pairings(s):** Yuuri/Wolfram

**Setting:** Fourteen years post-season three. Yuuri is 29 and Wolfram is 96 (19), though he turns 97 here.

**Rating:** M

**A/N: **I got a couple of comments about the visual age gap, which I have to admit I also find a bit odd, but for this story it seemed necessary. I do like to explore Yuuri's life after he'd grown up a little bit anyway, but for the purposes of this plot and Wolfram's lingering prejudices I needed Yuuri's age to be more obvious and a bit more… severe, I guess. It _is _the only thing that truly distinguishes him from his full-demon counterparts. Yuuri is mostly human, after all, coming from Earth where the demon blood of his ancestors has been diluted over a few millennia, and his father clearly ages like a human in the anime. It's likely to slow in Yuuri later on, however. It's simply a matter of getting there.

* * *

_**Eternal Light**_

by Mikage

**Chapter Two**

If Yuuri were honest, he'd have to say he wasn't quite the king everyone had expected him to be—not even the king many people thought he was.

There were occasions when he felt dreadfully underprepared, not quite as lost as that fifteen-year-old school kid who'd traveled through an inter-dimensional vortex in the toilet of a women's bathroom, but still in need of guidance under a certain set of circumstances. He did his best to go without, because at four months shy of thirty he thought it was time for him to stand on his own two feet and bear the brunt of his responsibilities. His advisers couldn't hold his hand forever—no matter what Conrad promised on the contrary. There had to come a time when the people here could depend on him to see things through without the constant mollycoddling he'd received at their hand before.

Yet he remained far from perfect. Paperwork still bored him, meetings with the Aristocrats still unsettled him, and any indication of a disturbance in his kingdom or in the wider world still concerned him, whether that "indication" was truly cause for concern or not.

"So Massenia isn't a subject of Nadinia," he said, late one night in his office.

As far as Yuuri knew, the rest of his advisers were in bed. Gwendal had departed hours ago after taking a stack of edicts to be dispatched, and he hadn't seen Gunter around since his former tutor had requested his signature on a petition for the restoration of the castle chapel. Conrad had attempted to remain standing guard at the door for a while longer, but Yuuri had sent him off for some much needed rest with a firm demand and the genial reassurance that he would be well protected by the guards already stationed at the door.

One benefit to growing older was that Conrad didn't always treat him like a kid anymore. Now when Yuuri claimed to have a handle on things, his godfather would occasionally believe him.

Not always, but enough to make it count.

The office was dimly lit by the fire in the hearth and the candles set upon various surfaces, joined by the moon that glowed through the windows as his back. The sun had set long ago, before he'd even returned to his office following dinner in the Great Hall. Yuuri's internal clock told him it couldn't be too far from midnight—not that latest he'd stayed up by any means, but still later than a normal evening.

"No, not necessarily," Murata replied. "A majority of Massenia's kings have been known to pledge fealty to the High Priest of Nadinia, but Massenia remains independent and ruled by their own monarchy, and the two have not always been on the best of terms."

Murata sat in a chair he'd dragged up to the opposite side of Yuuri's desk. Yuuri had removed his jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt once he'd sequestered himself back into his office, but Murata didn't look quite so leisurely. He wore his jacket with the stiff collar buttoned securely. A map of the islands and continents that lied in the same hemisphere as the Great Demon Kingdom had been spread out on the table between them, along with two gilt goblets and a bottle of red wine.

They frequently came together like this, late at night when the rest of the castle was asleep, pouring over the multitude of issues Yuuri didn't feel he'd adequately covered with his other advisers earlier in the day. Murata was different than Gwendal and Gunter and Conrad. He understood him better. He knew how to explain a situation without scowling or turning it into a lecture. Yuuri didn't feel like a clueless fifteen-year-old around him. He didn't feel like a king or a student either. He felt equal.

Sometimes he craved a little equality.

"Think of Nadinia like Rome," Murata continued, tapping his finger over a small piece of land to the north-west of Cimaron, "and the High Priest like the Pope."

"So it's a religious affiliation," Yuuri guessed.

"At its most basic," Murata agreed, "but of course there's a political aspect to every alliance. Nadinia requires the support and protection of larger nations to repel threats from outside forces, and many of the kings of the human realms believe that in being anointed by the High Priest their claims to the thrones of their respective kingdoms are validated and divinely ordained."

"Gunter only covered basic world religion," Yuuri admitted.

Murata's mouth twisted into a smile. "It's about as convoluted as Earth," he said.

"Does Cimaron ally itself with Nadinia?"

"They used to, if I recall correctly. Since they're now two separate countries, it's harder to say. Small Cimaron doesn't seem to, and Big Cimaron looks as if they intend to keep their distance, but if the High Priest came calling I'd expect them to open their doors."

"Do you think they'd ally with Massenia?" Yuuri wondered, gulping down a swig of wine.

"That I don't know," Murata said. He swirled his wine around in his goblet. "I think it would depend on what Massenia had to offer them. I doubt Saralegui cares much, and Big Cimaron's certainly not the type to join forces with anyone simply because they have the High Priest's blessing."

"But would toppling the 'Wicked Scourge' be enough to convince them?"

Murata's eyes twinkled with amusement. "You're pretty hung up on that," he observed.

"It's kind of a hard thing to forget. I'm used to 'demon' and 'devil' and 'monster,' sometimes even 'abomination' and 'fiend,' but this is the first time anyone's called me a 'scourge,'" Yuuri replied, frowning down at the map.

"So you're a plague unto this world," Murata shrugged. It almost seemed as if he thought the whole matter to be quite funny. "You knew there'd always be someone looking at you as the source of all evil when you took the job."

Yuuri heaved a sigh and deflated. "I thought I'd destroyed all evil," he mumbled dejectedly.

"The Originator? One among many, my friend. He just happened to be particularly nasty. Tried to destroy the world and all that."

"But the Great One sealed him away and I got rid of him for good, and yet half of the humans still hate our guts."

"They hate what they don't understand," Murata reminded him. "The humans' only source of magic lies in stones with alchemic properties, which only a select few humans are capable of mastering the use of. The rest of them line their castles with them, knowing the effect the stones have on demons but failing to draw upon their true potential. Our magic, on the other hand, is inherent, and you've demonstrated your power countless times. You can make it rain. You can set the castle on fire with a flick of your hand. The humans fear that. They know they'd have a hard time defending against it."

"Cimaron didn't do too badly in the last war," Yuuri pointed out.

"That's because the Great Demon Kingdom was practically at war with itself at the same time," Murata replied. "They'd had a human Prince Consort in Lord Weller's father a little more than half a century before, and the human population within the borders was steadily increasing. Most of them despised humans. Some of them despise humans to this day. There was a lot of racial tension in the government at the time. Lady von Spitzweg obviously held no prejudices against them, but the same couldn't exactly be said for her brother and a few of the other Aristocrats. Even Lord von Voltaire was conflicted."

Yuuri's frown deepened considerably, as it always did when he heard about the past. It wasn't that he couldn't understand it. Earth wasn't exactly free from racism and bigotry either. It was that he wished it hadn't needed to be that way. The humans and the demons could learn so much from one another if they'd only take the time to work together.

He'd worked hard to make advances. For the most part he was proud of what he'd managed to accomplish. The Great Demon Kingdom now had human allies. Many of the people within the government who'd once spoken or acted against the humans had rethought their actions and operated under a different policy now. More humans had settled in the kingdom, escaping other sorts of oppression and persecution in their homelands. Interracial marriages had been allowed for years now, and the number of demon children to be born with some fraction of human blood had increased by ten percent in the last fourteen years.

But they were still a long way from total peace. Cavalcade, Francia, Caloria and the other kingdoms they'd made treaties with didn't even make up a third of the countries in the world. There were still plenty of enemies, a reality Yuuri was learning to accept more and more with each new outcry against him or his people.

"So would getting rid of me be enough to sway Big Cimaron into an alliance?" he asked, returning to his original question as he poured himself another goblet full of wine.

"At this point, no, I don't believe so," Murata said as he slowly shook his head. "I think Big Cimaron's a lot more wary of confronting you than they used to be. Belar never succeeded. Lanzhil didn't fare any better, and let's not forget how his people rebelled against him. The people of Cimaron want peace and the man they've put on the thrown seems a lot more practical than Belar the Insane and Lanzhil the Bad."

Yuuri snorted at the epithets. "I wonder what people will call me," he said.

"Yuuri the Magnanimous?"

"Not Yuuri the Idiot? Or Yuuri the Scourge?"

"Yuuri the Fearless?" Murata suggested. "I imagine someone will try to popularize Yuuri the Black for your coloring."

Yuuri rolled his eyes and gave a sarcastic reply. "Because _that's_ an accomplishment. What are you going to be? Murata the Wise?"

"Highly likely," Murata agreed with a swiftly widening grin.

"Full of yourself, aren't you?"

"I just accept that my keen intelligence will likely be the only thing worth remembering. I don't fight wars, I strategize. Everything else is your job."

"Not the easiest job in the world, that's for sure."

Yuuri leaned back against his chair to stretch his legs out and lifted his arms above his head to work the kinks out of his back. He didn't like to complain because he knew there were plenty of people out there who had things much worse than he did, but sometimes the stress of it got to him, and he thought about how nice it might be to be just another face in the crowd.

When he'd been younger he'd bemoaned the fact that there wasn't anything about him that stood out. On Earth he was entirely average. Maybe he'd gotten some attention from adults for being friendly and an all-around good kid, but everyone else had taken to overlooking him. He'd never known that to be the case here. People either liked him or hated him. The ones that liked him wanted his attention and the ones who hated him wanted to kill him.

He didn't think he'd gotten used to it yet.

Sometimes he wondered if he ever would.

There were parts of it he liked. Helping people was what he lived for. Seeing that his subjects were happy and had what they needed to live a decent life was what he liked about the job. Bridging the racial gaps of the world made him feel as if he were actually making a difference. He wanted to be successful for the sake of others, not just for himself. If he could just finish what he'd started, if he could resolve the differences between the humans and the demons before he died—a weighty task, he'd admit—then he honestly wouldn't care how people chose to remember him once he was gone.

The history books could say whatever they wanted. There'd still be people out there who knew the truth.

"Do you think Elric plans one starting another war?" he asked once he'd settled into position over the desk again.

So far none of his other advisers seemed especially concerned, but Yuuri couldn't help thinking that no one who viewed him and his people with so much hate would just leave their threats at words.

"I think it will be a while before he manages to muster up enough support," Murata reassured him, "even if the High Priest approves. You're not exactly a pushover, Shibuya. If there's one good thing that comes with power aside from the ability to protect people, it's that everyone else takes you far more seriously. Most of the human kingdoms have serious reservations about standing against you, especially if it means invading the Great Demon Kingdom, where we have the benefit of our magic. Most of them would prefer to take on our armies in their own lands, but since you're obviously not the invading type it doesn't seem likely that that'll ever work in their favor."

"So we're not going to worry about Elric for now," Yuuri concluded.

"No, not worry, but definitely keep an eye on him. Yozak should return soon with more information. Once we have that, we'll have a better picture of what we might be up against."

"Right," Yuuri said.

He knew that made sense, he knew that without information they'd never know what to expect—which parts of the rumors were true and which parts were exaggerated—but with his track record he couldn't quell the anxious feeling in his gut that told him this could not end well.

"Don't get too far ahead of yourself, Shibuya," Murata jokingly warned him. "The stress will make you old."

"Ha ha," Yuuri sarcastically returned. "If that's supposed to be a dig at my age, you can shut it. You'll be thirty before I am."

"Two months until twenty-ten," Murata cheerfully agreed.

"Don't act so excited."

"Why not?" Murata wondered, grabbing the wine bottle but ignoring his goblet to inelegantly polish off the rest that remained. "Age is just a number and all that jazz. Besides, I see nothing wrong with being old and wizened."

"No different from young and wizened to you, is it?"

"Am I sensing some jealousy?"

"No, you're just so… I don't know… blasé about everything."

"Nice word choice there, Shibuya."

Yuuri's snort turned into a laugh. "Shut up. I'm trying."

"Von Bielefeld would be proud."

Whatever feelings of amusement Yuuri might have been experiencing before then died or quickly sobered.

His mind flashed to thoughts of his former fiancé and current husband, and he wondered where the hell he'd gone wrong with that relationship. Nothing about it seemed unstable to the public eye, but Yuuri knew better. Something wasn't quite right and he still had no idea if it was something he'd done or if Wolfram just wasn't being honest with him.

Happiness was a fleeting notion. Immediately after the wedding Yuuri could honestly say he'd been happy. For years he'd spent a great deal of time denying he felt anything at all—and for some of it he might not have—but growing up had a way of putting things into perspective, and _his_ perspective had centered around Wolfram as soon as he realized he wasn't as opposed to marrying him as he'd previously thought. Wolfram was a few things he'd always wanted and a lot of things he'd never thought he would. Once the surprise of it had passed he'd been able to settle into the relationship with relative ease.

Being with Wolfram was easy, or at least it had been. Wolfram knew him so well—his thoughts and fears and hopes and dreams—and though Yuuri couldn't claim to know Wolfram just as accurately, he was picking up bits and pieces of him every day. Each piece endeared the willful brat to him, even the parts that should have annoyed him. He wanted like he'd never wanted anyone before. It was more than physical, it was emotional. Sometimes the giddy part of his brain even thought it was spiritual. They were perfect for each other in a way Yuuri never could have imagined.

But the relationship itself _wasn't_ perfect, and Yuuri was still struggling to understand why.

Murata met his silence with a knowing look to his eyes.

Tempting as it might have been to seek his advice, Yuuri had a feeling this was something he should be working out on his own.

"It's getting late," he said, searching for an excuse to escape from the confrontation before Murata managed to ask him about it.

"What, you can't pull an all-nighter anymore?" Murata teased.

"Sure I could," Yuuri replied. "Doesn't mean I should."

"So responsible," Murata observed.

"Someone's got to be."

They both stood from their respective chairs. Yuuri grabbed his discarded jacket from the back of his but didn't pull it back on. There wasn't any point. He'd be changing for bed once he got to his room anyway.

"We'll pick this up later then," Murata offered.

Yuuri left the map on the desk but grabbed the empty goblets and wine bottle to pass them off to the first maid he saw upon exiting the office.

As they headed down the hall, Murata playfully jabbed Yuuri with his elbow. "Maybe you'll get lucky tonight," he teased him slyly, wagging his brows suggestively.

Yuuri laughed and grinned in response.

Inside he thought that was highly unlikely.

* * *

Rare were the times when Yuuri knew exactly what Wolfram was thinking.

There were a few occasions when it was obvious. Wolfram had such an expressive face, such fierce, fiery eyes that certain thoughts passed right through and crackled in the air between them. Usually it was anger or annoyance. Occasionally it was sadness. Rarely was it happiness. Yuuri was beginning to think Wolfram hadn't felt happy about anything in a long, long time.

The rest of the time he had no idea what was going on in Wolfram's head. For such a loud, demanding person Wolfram could be exceptionally reserved in his personal life. He didn't trust people, he didn't touch people, he barely ever _liked_ people, and even when he did it often wasn't enough for him to offer a glimpse into his mind, a peek into his heart. He'd closed himself off more and more since the wedding, withdrew from crowds, seemed to lose interest in a lot of things he used to enjoy, and put up walls Yuuri was still struggling to climb over.

More than anything it made Yuuri sad. They were married now. They were together in a way they'd never been before. He thought they should be able to trust one another explicitly, even if Wolfram never trusted anyone else. They had comforted each other at their lowest and praised each other at their highest. There wasn't any point in holding anything back anymore. They were supposed to be a team.

Yuuri awoke one night late in March and turned over to snuggle against Wolfram's back, only to find Wolfram missing from bed.

Groggily he pushed himself up to search through the firelight for any sign of him. He saw a slight shape hunched by one of the windows, bathed in silver moonlight.

"Wolfram," Yuuri called to him. His voice felt rough and scratchy from sleep. When Wolfram did not turn upon hearing his name, Yuuri called again, "Wolf…"

Still Wolfram did not move, not to wave him off or look over his shoulder or give any other indication that he'd heard him.

Suspecting that Wolfram might be ignoring him, Yuuri rolled out of bed and made his way toward him. He didn't care if Wolfram wanted his company or not. If he didn't want to be bothered, he should have said so. Yuuri would have backed down the moment he did.

He never liked to forced things when he didn't have to, not when he already feared that Wolfram might not be as happy about their situation as Yuuri wanted him to be.

Wolfram stood by the window with his forehead pressed against the glass. His shoulders were slumped, his hands tightly clutching a dressing gown around his body over his nightgown. In the glow of the moon and firelight Yuuri could see that he had his eyes closed, but he didn't appear to be sleeping. His face was too rigid, his breathing too restrained—like he was doing his best to control it.

Yuuri gently took hold of one of Wolfram's arms. He was surprised to see him give a start and whip around to face him with a look of shock. It was as if Wolfram hadn't heard him speak, as if he hadn't sensed Yuuri coming up behind him at all.

Considering Wolfram usually had such impeccable instincts, it was an alarming thought.

"Sorry," Yuuri apologized, lifting his other hand to comfortingly rub both of Wolfram's arms. "I called you but you didn't answer."

"Sorry," Wolfram apologized in turn. He sounded jumpy and unsettled, his breathing too erratic now that he wasn't focusing on mastering it. "I was just…"

He made a motion with one of his hands, brought it to his head like he meant to say "lost in thought" but couldn't think of the appropriate expression.

Yuuri stared at him strangely. He tried not to put many of his thoughts and concerns in his expression in case they should cause Wolfram to clam up, but for the moment he let himself seem unsettled. This was not normal. There had been a lot about Wolfram's behavior recently that he didn't think was normal, but most of them were little things, so minor he wouldn't blame anyone else for not noticing.

This didn't seem like a little thing.

"It's okay," Yuuri said, doing his best to sound as patient and understanding as possible, even if he truly had no idea what was going on. He rubbed Wolfram's arms a bit more firmly as he asked, "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," Wolfram tried, shaking his head too emphatically to be believable.

"It's not nothing," Yuuri gently corrected him. "Something's bothering you."

"No… it's nothing…"

"Wolf…" Yuuri began, prepared to make it an order and too concerned to care how angry Wolfram would be in response, but Wolfram's behavior staid him before he could issue the demand.

Wolfram's breathing did not return to normal. It came in quick gasps that sounded as if he were struggling to draw air. His face had taken on a thin sheen of sweat, cold and clammy to the touch. When Yuuri pulled him close, Wolfram leaned heavily against him—not grabbing hold, but tense with a sort of panic, like some poor creature being hunted and trapped. His eyes were too wide and his skin too pale. He looked fragile—not a word Yuuri would ever have chosen to describe him before—sick or… or disturbed… nothing like his usual self at all.

Parts of it made Yuuri think of the effect the human stones typically had on Wolfram, and even though they didn't affect _him_ the same way he'd learned to sense their presence over the years, like a faint, resonating pulse in the back of his mind. He didn't sense anything like that now. Whatever this was, it wasn't being caused by something external as far as he could see. There was no sign of an intruder either. If there was, Wolfram wouldn't have been standing idle by the window.

There was a small seating area near the windows, a couch and a couple of chairs grouped around a wooden coffee table. Yuuri guided Wolfram to it and helped him lie on the couch, unsure if Wolfram would even be able to make it back to the bed.

He considered sending someone to fetch for Gisela, but didn't want to leave Wolfram long enough to do it. In his alarm, he didn't even think to just shout for the guards.

"Wolfram, come on, what's wrong?" he asked, kneeling beside the couch and taking one of Wolfram's hands into both of his own.

Wolfram didn't answer. He opened as mouth as if he meant to, but it was like he couldn't even speak.

Somewhere in the back of Yuuri's mind he thought he might know what this was. He'd never known it to happen to anyone before, least of all Wolfram, but as he didn't know what else it could possibly be he was left with very few answers. He had no idea what the cause of it had been. It seemed so sudden. He'd never seen Wolfram like this in all the years that he'd known him.

Except… perhaps he had… on their wedding night four years ago… but now that Yuuri was beginning to formulate some suspicions he didn't want to think it'd happened then without him even realizing it.

What kind of idiot did that make him if he didn't even _notice_?

"Shhh, Wolfram. It's okay," he tried.

He couldn't be sure if it helped or if his hanging around made things worse, or if Wolfram barely even noticed him there at all, but he felt useless enough without trying to offer some comfort where he could.

Yuuri retracted one of his hands and placed his palm against Wolfram's chest, feeling Wolfram's heart pounding away beneath his clothes. It was going too fast. He didn't like the feel of it. Not since the boxes. Wolfram's heart had been a delicate subject since then. He didn't want anyone controlling it. He didn't want anyone causing it undue stress.

This wasn't normal, he thought again. Something was terribly wrong.

He pulled his magic forward, sent it through his arm to his hand which began to glow softly green. Yuuri had never associated green with warmth before, but that was exactly what healing magic felt like—warm and soothing, like safety and peace. He liked it best out of all of his abilities because it helped more than it hurt, not like fire that burned or water that flooded or earth that buried people alive.

He sent his magic in through Wolfram's chest, trying to calm his heart before focusing on soothing his mind, but something zipped through the connection, a tingling in his fingers that turned into an electric shock through his arm.

Yuuri hissed at the sensation and pulled his hand away, staring in a mix of confusion and amazement.

"Shit, what was that?" he breathed.

Wolfram didn't seem to have noticed. His condition hadn't changed at all, nor had the expression on his face. Yuuri could only assume he hadn't felt it.

It worried him. Even if Wolfram couldn't feel it, what if it hurt him anyway? What if it was the root of the problem and meddling with it only made things worse? What if it played with his magic and caused more harm than good?

Whatever it was, Yuuri couldn't just sit around and watch. He wasn't the strongest demon king to ever live for nothing.

Tentatively he placed his hand back on Wolfram's chest, steeled himself for another jolt, and focused his magic into him again.

It was less powerful this time, still an obvious manifestation of… something… but it didn't pack quite as strong of a punch the second time around. He felt it like a wave, then as a steady vibration. The longer he used his magic, the more a sort of awareness settled upon his mind.

It concerned him only because he didn't know what it was. He was, however, somewhat relieved to discover it didn't hurt. If anything it felt erratic, mimicking Wolfram's anxious state with little bursts of power. It was almost like magic. In some ways it reminded him of the sensation he'd always felt before transforming, like there was some force crawling through him and surging forward, waiting to break free.

He put his other hand against Wolfram's forehead when he thought his magic might be working and tried to ignore the feeling for now. Instead, he focused on projecting a sense of calm.

"Shhh, Wolfram," he shushed him again. "Just breathe... It's okay… Try to focus… Relax… All you have to do is breathe."

That seemed difficult enough, but after a few minutes of constant healing Wolfram's heart rate began to slow and his breaths grew more consistent. Gradually he relaxed, settling a little more comfortably against the couch and turning his head to glance at Yuuri with a gaze that looked weary but more alert than before.

"Hey," Yuuri said. He tried to smile as he asked, "You okay?"

Wolfram's head moved up and down once, then side to side. He didn't seem to know which way to answer.

"What's wrong?" Yuuri tried again, keeping his voice low and quiet. He didn't want to seem as worried as he felt in case Wolfram could pick up on it and ended up having a bad reaction to it.

Wolfram opened his mouth to say something, but it took a moment before he was able to get out any words.

"… tired…" he said.

Yuuri forced himself to keep smiling. He leaned in to kiss the side of Wolfram's face. "I'll help you back to bed," he offered.

Wolfram answered with a slow nod and wearily shut his eyes.

When Yuuri let go of the magic and took his hands away, he could still feel that strange… something… almost like an extra presence—a faint buzz of distant energy.

He wanted to ask about it but didn't think Wolfram was in any state for a conversation. In the meantime, Yuuri slipped an arm around him and helped Wolfram to his feet. Even at his weakest Yuuri doubted Wolfram would consent to being carried, and he wasn't of a mind to do anything to cause him further distress. He held him tightly around the shoulders and took hold of one of Wolfram's hands, carefully guiding him across the room.

Yuuri lifted him only slightly when they came to the bedside, gave him a boost with one of his hands on Wolfram's thigh, but for the most part he let Wolfram climb up on his own.

Once Wolfram was lying down again, Yuuri pulled the blankets over him, adjusted his pillow to make sure Wolfram was comfortable. Then he climbed back into bed as well. He didn't bother circling around to his side, merely hoisted himself up and over Wolfram to settle himself beside him.

Yuuri put his hands back on him then—one on Wolfram's chest above his heart, the other tenderly carding through Wolfram's hair.

"Get some sleep," he said, though he doubted there was any point in speaking.

Wolfram drifted off relatively quickly. If he didn't, then he did a damned good job pretending. He blinked his eyes rather slowly a few times, stared at Yuuri through the darkness with a softness to his features that looked much more reassuring than the tense set of them before, then closed his eyes again and turned his head into Yuuri's caress.

Moments later, the sound of Wolfram's deep, even breathing pulled a sigh of relief from within Yuuri's chest.

He watched Wolfram for a time, leaned close to place gentle kisses against his forehead, cheek, and nose, before kissing Wolfram's mouth and nuzzling into the side of his neck.

Yuuri didn't get back to sleep until the sun had just begun to rise over the horizon, bathing the room in brilliant light.

* * *

"Do you know what depression is, Conrad?"

April brought with it a more temperate climate. The skies were generally clear, free of any dark clouds that might herald a coming storm. A warm breeze brought relief to a populace overwhelmed by a cold, desolate winter, casting the days of damaging ice and thick snows into nothing more than a memory. The heavy scent of flowers filled the air, their perfume at its most dense in the gardens and courtyard, drawing the castle residents outdoors with their sweet haze beneath a dazzling sun.

The castle grounds were filled with sound—the buzz of bees and other insects come to flit about after a long hibernation; the whinnying and snorts and clop-clop-clop of hooves as the horses were brought forth from the stables to exercise in the open air; laughter and quiet conversation from the groups of courtiers who mingled outdoors, free from the gloomy confines of the castle.

Spring was Yuuri's favorite season. It meant an end to dreary days, the beginning of baseball, and Wolfram's birthday. He thought he understood what people meant about spring being a new beginning. There was something in the air in the springtime, something uplifting and wonderful—like nature knew what peace was even if the people who lived among it didn't.

In April and May, before the weather turned sweltering and uncomfortable, Yuuri took full advantage of the clear, sunny mornings and used this time for exercise and training. He never missed a session if he could help it. Even illness was rarely enough to keep him away. Aside from keeping him fit, there was something about pushing his body through the motions—stretching and running and practicing technique—that helped to clear the jumbled thoughts in his mind.

It was something he desperately needed, a short respite before the rest of his day was taken up by forms and petitions and endless meetings.

Conrad never failed to join him. Yuuri knew it was mostly because Conrad felt it was his duty to protect him, but there was a part of Yuuri that liked to think it was more than that, that his godfather liked this brief time they had alone together as much as Yuuri did. Not only did it give them the chance to temporarily set aside their roles of King and bodyguard—though Conrad, of course, had more trouble letting go of his duty than Yuuri did—but it gave them the opportunity to talk about things Yuuri wasn't comfortable bringing up in a more public place.

Their first order of business after warming up was always to jog around the castle. They did so nearly side-by-side, with Conrad perhaps a small step behind out of some lingering notion of propriety. It was enough for them to converse.

"It's a condition of the brain quite prevalent on Earth, I believe," his godfather replied. He had an easy smile in place, but there was something about his eyes that always managed to look mildly concerned when Yuuri brought up anything that might alert him to trouble.

"People don't know about it here?" Yuuri wondered.

"The brain is perhaps the most mysterious of all organs," Conrad recited. "I'm certain that applies on Earth as well, but as we are less advanced it stands to reason that you would have more knowledge about such things than I would. I admit I studied very little advanced medicine in my time on Earth."

"So if I asked Gisela about it, she probably wouldn't know?"

"Demons have a slight advantage over humans in terms of medical success due to their use of magic, but no, I don't believe Gisela would have any more knowledge on the subject than I do."

Yuuri frowned deeply. His steps faltered for a moment before he adjusted his pace and kept going.

"That's not to say she wouldn't be able to devise a method to treat it," Conrad continued, his voice taking on a soft, reassuring quality. "Magic has its benefits, and there are herbs known to soothe the nerves. It may be that she could find some combination of the two that might prove beneficial, but of course there's no guarantee."

"I guess it's better than nothing," Yuuri observed.

They turned a corner and jogged passed the stables. Most of the stable hands bowed low when they noticed them, but Yuuri was too deep in thought to pay them any mind.

"What is this about?" Conrad cautiously asked. "Have you been feeling-"

"No, it's not me," Yuuri jumped to reassure him before his godfather could finish the thought. "It's Wolfram."

"Wolfram?"

"Haven't you noticed he's been different recently?"

He could see Conrad's smile quickly lower into a frown out of the corner of his eye. "He has seemed somewhat withdrawn as of late," his godfather admitted.

"It's awful," Yuuri said. "It's like nothing makes him happy anymore and he barely lets me try to help. I told his guards to keep an eye on him in case he gets worse, but they haven't really seen much, just that he's been a little more moody. I keep telling him to see Gisela but he's too stubborn to listen."

"Wolfram does as he will," Conrad agreed.

Yuuri nodded and announced, without preamble, "I think he had a panic attack the other night."

There was no immediate reply, but Yuuri heard the skid of dirt beneath Conrad's boot and watched his godfather's figure drop out of his line of sight. Yuuri paused to turn. Conrad had come to a stop a few feet behind him. He looked suddenly troubled.

"What?" Yuuri asked. "Do you know what that is?"

Conrad frowned. "I believe I may have some idea, yes," he replied.

"Then he's had them before?"

Conrad nodded coolly and stepped forward to continue their journey around the castle. Yuuri fell back into step beside him. They walked instead of jogged.

"When he was a boy," Conrad slowly explained, "Wolfram would awaken to these… 'fits' is what we came to call them. He grew tense and cold. He struggled to breathe. The healers had no explanation for it. We assumed it was a reaction to a nightmare. He was known to experience especially vivid dreams even as a child."

"Did he have them a lot?"

"Not as a very young child, no," his godfather said. He paused a moment as if to think. "He only began to experience them in his late thirties. Mother always said it was due to fear. He understood much of what was going on around him but had no means to control it or express himself. Mother blamed Stoffel and Waltorana for filling his head with horrific stories about the humans."

"I've never seen him have one before," Yuuri told him. "Not until the other night."

He failed to mention his suspicions about their wedding night. Not only did the thought encourage a deep sense of guilt, but he was terrified about what it might mean.

"I'm told he had them frequently during the war," Conrad said. "It was one of the reasons Mother and Gwendal refused to send him into battle. They told Wolfram differently, of course, insisted that he must remain behind to finish his lessons and receive extra training from Julia."

"He seemed fine when I first came here," Yuuri pointed out.

"He likely was," Conrad replied. "He was calmer once the war ended. Mother never heard word of any other fits. We assumed he'd either grown out of them or had taken to hiding them from us. We had the healers monitor him but they never detected anything out of the ordinary. Wolfram was developing normally. He was strong and talented. He never showed any indication that something might be wrong."

"What did the healers do when he had one? Could they stop it?"

"They could lessen the effects but not stop it entirely, nor could they ever prevent them. For many years he was encouraged to drink tea before bed, mixed with herbs to settle the nerves and induce sleep. As far as I'm aware, he hasn't had need of them since the war."

Yuuri released a heavy sigh. "He should probably try using them again, but I bet he'd bite my head off if I tried to talk to him about it."

Conrad chuckled softly. It didn't sound especially amused.

There wasn't anything amusing about it, really. Yuuri felt helpless. If Wolfram wasn't going to cooperate—or if he outright refused to admit that there was anything going on—and if the healers could only do so much to help him, Yuuri didn't see how they had very many options. He'd take Wolfram to Earth if he thought it would help. A doctor might be able to sort him out, but that all relied on Wolfram actually talking about it. Yuuri already knew forcing it would only make Wolfram close himself off even more.

It was bad enough that it was happening in the first place. Yuuri didn't want to give Wolfram the chance to hide it and escape from the scrutiny. Pretending wasn't going to solve anything, but then he didn't even know which was the right way to deal with this. Half of him wanted to give Wolfram the chance to figure it out, to come to him about it on his own. The other half wanted to confront him right away, express his concerns and demand that Wolfram let him do something about it.

What frustrated him the most was that he had no clue _why_ this was happening. The country was at peace. They weren't fighting any wars, and racial tensions weren't quite as high any more. As far as Yuuri could see, there wasn't any obvious reason for this.

But there _had_ to be an explanation, he told himself. Things like this didn't just happen on their own, did they?

Very briefly his memories took him back to their wedding night. He could remember the look on Wolfram's face—not exactly fear, but a certain discomfort Yuuri had been unable to ease. He could remember how tense Wolfram had been, how nothing Yuuri had done to try to bring him pleasure had any effect at all. Wolfram had seemed disturbed and distracted. It had been more than embarrassment, he thought.

At the time, and for years after, he'd always assumed it had been because of their audience. He'd never considered that it might be the sex itself, or some other aspect of their relationship he couldn't yet identify. Wolfram hadn't shied away from him at other times. Maybe he wasn't as enthusiastic about physical intimacy as Yuuri had imagined he would be, but he was at least amendable. Some nights were better than others. Some nights Yuuri could tell that Wolfram enjoyed it.

Other nights it was different, and there was a tension in Wolfram Yuuri had never quite been able to figure out.

"I think it's making his magic go haywire," Yuuri said once he and Conrad had walked a ways without another word spoken between them.

"How do you mean?"

"I tried to heal him," Yuuri said. "I thought it might help, and it did after a while, or at least he started to calm down, but I felt something weird, too. It almost reacted to what was going on. Like it was strong at first, and then it started to relax when he did."

Conrad's eyes narrowed in thought. "You felt his magic?"

"I felt _something_," Yuuri replied. "I just thought that's what it was, 'cause it doesn't seem like it's hurting him but it definitely feels like some kind of energy. Now sometimes I can feel it when I'm around him without using any magic on him. It's sort of like… when you feel someone coming up behind you. You don't see them, but you still know they're there."

"And you felt no trace of it before you attempted to heal him?"

"Right…"

"He was ill for quite some time," Conrad observed.

"You think that has something to do with it?"

For nearly a minute, Conrad didn't answer. He looked off to the side like he was suddenly lost in deep thought, either overcome with a memory or considering something seriously. When he returned to the present, his expression was unreadable.

"It's possible," he finally said.

Yuuri began to feel as if he'd missed something during that exchange. "You're not telling me something," he alleged.

The smile Conrad showed him looked forcibly reassuring.

"You're not going to tell me even if I ask you, are you?" Yuuri wondered.

"If we kept you apprised of all of our suspicious, you would never have any peace," Conrad told him.

"Can you at least tell me if I should be worried?"

"No, you needn't be worried."

"And you'll tell me if it turns out you're right?" Yuuri made sure.

"Yes, of course."

It was a situation he'd grown to despise, but not one he was unused to. In some ways he supposed it made sense. If his advisers told him everything that went on before they had all of the necessary information, he'd likely be a basket case, constantly jumping at shadows and making false assumptions. Rumors of instability in the human lands were bad enough; personal issues were far more difficult to ignore, but also much more of a cause for stress.

All he could do was trust that those closest to him would enlighten him when the appropriate time came, and hope he came to the right decisions when they did.

"Fine," he felt the need to say, "but don't take too long."

Conrad nodded in agreement.

Yuuri tried to clear his head as they picked up the pace and returned to jogging, brought up other topics that were not quite so worrying in the hopes that he would be distracted long enough to ease himself into the rest of the day, but there was always a lingering thought in the back of his mind, a little voice that warned him of impending hardships.

It sounded something like his other half, deep and dark and too severe to be comforting.

He didn't want to listen.

* * *

When several days passed without Conrad choosing to reveal any of his suspicions, Yuuri took matters into his own hands and decided to risk trying to bring the subject up with Wolfram.

He'd learned over the years how to be clever about picking the right words at the right time. There were some occasions when he couldn't be furtive enough about it, when he had to be blunt instead. Those confrontations usually ended in an outburst from his husband and a day or so spent on the receiving end of the silent treatment. Then there were other occasions when Yuuri managed it with more finesse, when he disguised his concerns beneath comments and actions that tended not to give him away as easily.

Doing so in bed could either be disastrous, or just the trick to get the exact information he wanted.

Mostly it depended on Wolfram's mood beforehand. If he had no desire for sex then the walls would go up and Yuuri would have no hope of scaling them. Then he would either resort to candid questions or put it off for another time. On the other hand, if Wolfram was in one of his favorable moods—the increasingly rare occasions when he seemed more open to the thought of intimacy—Yuuri was likely to have better luck.

"You're so beautiful," he mumbled against Wolfram's lips, holding Wolfram's face between his hands while Wolfram's fingers grasped at his jacket.

It was Wolfram's birthday. Or it had been. The sun had set some time during dinner, bringing the day to a pleasant close.

Yuuri had spent most of the day promoting a relaxed atmosphere and encouraging Wolfram's less distressing behavior, buttering him up with presents and praise. He had two motives. The first was to allay any of Wolfram's suspicions or concerns by distracting him with the sort of indulgence Yuuri wasn't always capable of providing him with. The second was not nearly as selfish and underhanded. Sometimes he simply enjoyed treating his husband to a day of recreation and amusement.

For all of Wolfram's insistence that he was a soldier first and foremost, he thoroughly enjoyed being pampered. This was one of the few parts of their relationship that tended to work out for the better, as it was in Yuuri's nature to care for people and nurture their happiness. Wolfram was admittedly not the easiest person to please on a regular basis. If Yuuri tried it every day, or even once a week, Wolfram tended to grow annoyed by his hovering. Some days were easier and more conducive to pampering than others.

He was careful to let Wolfram sleep in, ordered the maids to bring him breakfast in bed—with a few extra pastries to satisfy Wolfram's sweet tooth. When Yuuri returned from his morning exercises, he'd announced that he was taking the day off from work to a look of genuine joy. Then they'd bathed together in water scented with Wolfram's favorite rose oil, and Yuuri treated Wolfram to a relaxing massage. He made sure there was nothing sexual about his advances that morning. He wasn't of a mind to put Wolfram on the defensive before he'd even been able to wear him down.

The rest of the day was spent at their leisure. Yuuri took Wolfram for a walk in the gardens, then for a ride through the capital, where the townsfolk greeted them with delight, cheering their arrival and showering Wolfram with flowers and wishes for another fruitful year. By the time they returned for a late lunch in the courtyard with Lady Celi and Waltorana, Wolfram was all smiles and bright, sparkling eyes.

Yuuri presented Wolfram with his gifts that afternoon, over tea in their private sitting room where they could pass their time out of sight of prying eyes. He showered Wolfram with paints and pastels and graphite and ink for his artwork, some of which he'd order through various merchants in the kingdom and some which he'd purchased on Earth. He gave him a new brooch with sapphires from Bielefeld and precious diamonds from the western mountains, ropes of pearls for embellishments on his uniforms, and bolts of expensive fabrics for new clothing—royal black, noble purple, pale blue, soft pink, and bold red.

Then he handed over another letter from Greta, one she'd bid him to save for this very day. Accompanying it was a ring of diamond and ruby she said once belonged to her birth father.

It cemented the day with perfection like nothing else could.

By the time they sat down to their private dinner, Wolfram was practically a puddle of goo. His lips curved into an easy smile, his cheeks took on a rosy hue, and his eyes held the kind of desirous passion Yuuri was not often privileged enough to see.

Dessert was served in bed. Their lips met as soon as they were finished, their dishes and silverware set out of the way on the side table, and Yuuri felt as if he were only two steps away from success.

Presently they lied on the bed together, turned on their sides to kiss and touch and nestle closer.

"You're too good to me," Wolfram mumbled in reply.

His lips pressed against Yuuri's insistently. His hands prodded and grasped with a firmness he seldom possessed. It was like he'd gotten some of his old confidence back. His eyes burned with amorous heat, his chest rising and falling with the greedy breaths of lust.

He showed no panic, no sign of reservation.

"I wish I could be better," Yuuri whispered back. "I want to give you everything."

"I don't deserve it," Wolfram countered.

"Are you kidding?" Yuuri asked, chuckled quietly, slipped his tongue passed Wolfram's parted lips.

He could taste wine in Wolfram's mouth, lemon from the sauce that'd flavored their dinner, mint and chocolate from dessert. Wolfram moaned a wanton moan he usually kept contained, as his hips jutted forward lewdly and his hands held tight to Yuuri's jacket.

Yuuri broke the kiss to softly murmur.

"You're perfect," he said. "You're beautiful. Everything about you…"

It was true enough and said with feeling—but also with purpose.

The right compliments had a way of melting Wolfram's cold exterior. Already he looked at Yuuri with a mix of elation and awe, as if he couldn't understand how he'd come to have Yuuri as his own.

The feeling was mutual. From the moment Yuuri had set aside his annoyance and denial and finally looked at Wolfram as someone he could consider having a romantic relationship with, he'd wondered what Wolfram could possibly see in him to make him feel the same.

There were no words to adequately describe his husband the way Yuuri saw him. Yuuri had tried—he was always trying—but nothing he said ever seemed as if it was enough. Nothing he thought seemed worthy. Even "perfect" and "beautiful" seemed insufficient, but they were the best he had.

And Wolfram _was_ beautiful—too pretty to be "handsome," so lovely and strikingly androgynous, but just masculine enough to remind Yuuri that he was indeed male.

It didn't bother Yuuri the way he used to think it would. He could still appreciate an attractive female while enjoying the look of another man. He supposed it meant he was bisexual, but as sexuality wasn't as important of a factor in his kingdom as it was on Earth, he'd never really bothered to settle on a label.

Wolfram was in that period between youth and maturity, young enough to retain a trace of late adolescence and old enough to present himself like an adult. His face was round and soft like his mother's, his eyes just as large and vibrant, fringed with dark, curling lashes Yuuri could feel fluttering against his skin whenever Wolfram rested his head along his shoulder. Only Wolfram's expressions mirrored his more severe uncle and showed his Bielefeld strength, the iron core beneath his Spitzweg beauty.

His body was sturdy but compact. Wolfram had grown a few inches in fourteen years—just enough to notice but still too meager to make a difference beside men like Conrad and Gwendal. There was still something quite gangly about him, long arms and legs on a narrow torso. To Yuuri he looked thin and slender, but not skinny. There was a delicacy to his looks, a gracefulness that at times seemed as if it could progress toward dainty, but to assume that was all Wolfram was would be a mistake. His skin was soft and pale, but it covered toned, wiry muscle—not bulky or anything well-defined, but certainly formidable.

Wolfram looked like a prince but conducted himself like a soldier. Yuuri was not fool enough to think he'd have the upper hand in a fight simply because he had the benefit of height and weight.

The most notable change between the Wolfram of his teen years and the Wolfram of the present was his hair. As Wolfram's martial duties decreased he'd taken to wearing his hair in the longer, more fashionable style of the royal court. It did not yet rival Gwendal's or Gunter's in length, but it was getting close, steadily inching down his back to rest somewhere in the middle. Most days he wore it tied back like his older brother, but he'd let his mother style it and pin it up on a few occasions, and before Greta left for Zoracia Wolfram used to sit and let her braid it, threading it through with ribbons and flowers and strings of pearl.

Yuuri had always admired blond hair. There was something particularly alluring about Wolfram's—thick and wavy as it was. He sank his fingers into it, cupped the back of Wolfram's head in his palms and held him steady for another deep, sensual kiss.

"How are you feeling?" he asked when he broke the pleasurable contact, almost too distracted by the sight and smell and taste of Wolfram to remember he'd come into this with a mission.

Wolfram hummed contentedly, his warm breath fanning across Yuuri's face as he whispered, "'M fine…"

"You were sick not that long ago," Yuuri reminded him.

"It's gone now," Wolfram reassured him.

He looked too calm and cozy for Yuuri to suspect that he might be lying.

"So you're alright?" Yuuri wondered.

"Yes," Wolfram said and bestowed upon him a coy, inviting smile, "but I am a bit tired, so if you have any other plans I might suggest that you make good on them before I decide I'd rather sleep."

Yuuri pecked him on the lips with a quiet laugh. "Are you sure you're up for it?" he asked.

"I'm shocked you'd even bother to ask. I should think you'd make the most of it when I'm offering so nicely."

"Maybe you're trying to distract me," Yuuri suggested.

"Why should I do that?" Wolfram teasingly replied.

Yuuri paused to consider his choices before deciding this had been a bad idea. He'd lost the battle before it even began. All it took was an uncommonly salacious smile and Wolfram's thigh nudging itself between his legs for Yuuri to put off his original plan and choose to take advantage of a willing Wolfram instead.

He thought that might have been Wolfram's intent, that Wolfram might have known what he was trying to do and strived to set Yuuri off track with his own brand of clever diversion.

It worked if that was indeed the case, but then Yuuri had never claimed to be a genius.

He bore his weight against Wolfram to turn him on his back, attached his mouth to Wolfram's long, pale throat and ground his heated groin against the answering thrusts of Wolfram's pelvis. His hands slipped out of Wolfram's hair, dragged down his sides before tearing at the fastenings of Wolfram's jacket and shirt.

They removed each other's clothing with a deftness that came with four years of experience and an intimate familiarity with each other's bodies. Yuuri pulled back long enough to let Wolfram pull his jacket down his arms, push his shirt from his shoulders, as he all but ripped the clothes from Wolfram's torso in his excitement. He almost went without discarding his pants and undergarments, intended to make do by pushing them down enough to stay out of the way, but a disappointed groan from Wolfram and the drag of demanding fingers down his back encouraged him to change his mind.

Naked, they pressed together with an urgency Yuuri was unused to experiencing with his fickle husband. Wolfram's mouth was beseeching, opening to his lips and tongue with loud, exhilarating moans. Wolfram's hands were everywhere, pressing, grasping, and lightly scratching, so different from his usual behavior Yuuri was momentarily alarmed until desire took over and told him that this was good, this was progress, this meant Wolfram was getting better.

Yuuri put enough space between them to run his palms over Wolfram's skin, feeling the strong, steady beat of his heart as he grazed Wolfram's chest. He smoothed his hands down Wolfram's sides, and then stopped with one palm flush against Wolfram's stomach before he could reach down further.

"You've gained weight," he said, not to tease or to poke fun but as a general observation, almost intrigued by a change he thought of as quite out of the ordinary.

He'd come to notice it gradually over the last week and a half. First he'd wondered if Wolfram might be wearing his belt a notch or two looser, and then he'd actually seen Wolfram's slightly thicker middle one morning in the bath. It was not an extreme difference. He doubted anyone else could have seen it beneath the layers of Wolfram's clothes, but to Yuuri it was fairly obvious.

As he touched it, he noted that it felt more firm than he'd been expecting it to.

There was a very brief flash in Wolfram's eyes, like Yuuri's observation bothered him, but before Yuuri could apologize and assure him he didn't see anything wrong with it, Wolfram's gaze became inviting again. One of his hands forced its way down to curl around Yuuri's erection.

"Shit," Yuuri cursed. His hand slipped away from Wolfram's stomach to convulsively grab his hip. "Damn, Wolf… what's gotten into you?"

"Nothing yet," Wolfram joked suggestively.

Coming from Wolfram, that comment was vulgar. Yuuri groaned and thrust into Wolfram's grasp, all of his thoughts centering on the hard flesh between his legs and the insistent stroking of Wolfram's hand.

He took Wolfram on his hands and knees, lost in the sound of Wolfram's moans and the feel of Wolfram's body moving beneath him, shifting back with each of Yuuri's thrusts forward. It was, Yuuri had to admit, some of the best sex they'd had in the four years they'd been married, and he was so thrilled, so full of ardent need that he didn't spare another thought for the idea that Wolfram might have been doing it on purpose.

It hardly mattered as it was happening because Wolfram was actually enjoying himself, and that was something so rare these days Yuuri didn't want to ruin it for him by asking questions or smothering him with too much concern.

They lied together in the aftermath, on their sides with Wolfram's back against his chest. Yuuri kissed his neck and shoulder as Wolfram drifted off to sleep, a hand over Wolfram's heart, feeling the little tingles of energy whose origin he did not yet know.

* * *

He got his answer two days later.

"Elric's no pushover," Yozak said. His voice had settled into his customary careless tone, but Yuuri knew Yozak well enough to know when the spy was taking something seriously despite that. "As the oldest son he expects to inherit. He's been sure to make a name for himself in the meantime, leading most of his dear old dad's military campaigns."

Yuuri sat behind his desk, lounging in his chair instead of sitting bent over his paperwork, which he'd left abandoned as soon as Yozak walked in. He listened with interest, though the uncomfortable feeling in his gut only grew worse the more he heard.

Murata and Gwendal joined them, the former leaning against the wall with his arms crossed as the latter stood by the corner of Yuuri's desk, glowering appropriately. Yozak sat at the meeting table beyond Yuuri's workspace, frequently taking large gulps of drink from an animal skin sac. In a better world it would be water. Yuuri couldn't quite make himself believe this was that better world.

"How many kids does Godric have?" Yuuri asked.

"He had nine," Yozak said.

Yuuri whistled his disbelief.

"Unfortunately, three of his daughters are dead."

"So what does he have left?"

"Five princes and a single princess."

"But Elric's the only one we have to worry about, right?" Yuuri clarified.

"So far, though I wouldn't even worry too much about him yet," Yozak replied. "He's being kept busy heading a campaign against Cresny. Seems he's just in the habit of running his mouth. Thought he might like to let people know he loathes you in case they had any other ideas."

"What of Godric's other sons?" Gwendal asked.

"Edgar, the third son, has the most influence in the kingdom after Elric. A few years ago he married the only daughter of a prosperous duke and then inherited all of his lands and titles after his death. With a fortune like that he could fund a war pretty easily, but he's too smart to pit it all against us when the odds aren't in his favor. The rest of Godric's kids he uses as pawns to forge political alliances. Rumor has it he's already got his ten-year-old son engaged to the Princess of Granar."

"What does Godric think of Elric's comments against Shibuya?" Murata wondered aloud.

"If you're worried that Godric's going to want to war with us, you can rest easy," Yozak said. "He's focused on territory a bit closer to home, winning the fight against Cresny and keeping Lorne in line."

"But he doesn't like me any better," Yuuri assumed.

"Of course not," Yozak replied with a dismissive wave of his hand, as if Godric's feelings were of little consequence. "He thinks you're an upstart, said something about you rescinding your humanity by taking the throne of the Demon Kingdom, might have implied that you were the bane of the human race by letting the demons run rampant, but like I said… he's too busy to bother."

"Jee, _that's _reassuring," Yuuri said with a bite of sarcasm.

"Take it as a compliment," Yozak told him. "They wouldn't be saying half of this stuff about you if they didn't think you were a threat."

"Except I'm _not_ a threat."

Yozak shrugged. "For all they know, you could be."

"What about Elric's attempts to form alliances with Nysaia and Alloran?" Murata asked.

"Alloran they've got in the bag. Elric convinced Godric to marry his only surviving daughter off to the king. They'd just been betrothed when I left. They've likely had the wedding by now."

"And Nysaia?"

"Much harder to manage an alliance there when all of Godric's marriageable children are either settled down already or dead."

"What about Elric?" Yuuri wondered. "How old is he? Doesn't he have any kids?"

"He's thirty-five," Yozak answered. "He has a fifteen-year-old bastard boy through one of his mistresses and an infant son by his wife. He had two other bastard sons but they both died young, so the only piece he has to play for now is the older boy. The king of Nysaia's definitely not going to accept a bastard for any of his daughters, even a royal bastard."

"And none of his brothers have marriageable kids?"

"Nope. If there's one thing Godric's lacking, it's grandkids. Kind of surprising when you consider how many brats he and his wife popped out."

"How long do you think it'll be before Elric turns the heat on us?" Yuuri asked.

"Depending on how long he's in Cresny, it could be years," Yozak said. He sounded confident fairly confident about the assumption. "They're already giving him enough trouble as it is. I don't think their armies will be able to handle another war so soon."

The tight, uncomfortable feeling in Yuuri's gut slowly began to unravel, and though he could not make himself believe they were completely safe from conflict, he felt a little more hopeful that war with Massenia wasn't as imminent as he'd begun to fear. He had time to avoid it, to try and make peace before war was even an issue.

A knock on the door brought the debriefing to a halt. Yuuri straightened in his chair and called for whoever it was to enter.

Gisela poked her head in, glancing around the office and setting her eyes on each figure in turn, before her gaze slid forward and she locked her eyes with Yuuri.

He could see two others behind her—Conrad and the Captain of Wolfram's guard.

"Have I interrupted anything?" Gisela asked.

Yuuri managed a small, tight smile and shook his head. "No, you're fine," he said. "Is something wrong?"

His immediate concern was for Wolfram, of course. Conrad had yet to speak with him again on the subject, but that he was present along with a man from Wolfram's personal guard… Yuuri couldn't see how this could be about anything else.

Gisela looked from Yuuri to Gwendal, to Murata, to Yozak, and then back again. "There's a private matter I wish to discuss with you, Your Majesty," she said.

Yuuri swallowed nervously and nodded.

Yozak rose easily from his chair, taking another swig of his drink before he said, "That's all from me then."

"I'll read the rest in your report," Yuuri told him.

Yozak loped out the door, disappearing with a cheerful wave and a sudden smack to the back of one of Conrad's shoulders, which Conrad ignored as if he didn't even feel it.

Murata was next to leave, tossing Yuuri an odd smirk and nodding politely toward Gisela as he made his way through the door. Gwendal lingered a bit longer. He took his time rounding the table and shared a look with Conrad, who answered with a curt nod that caused Gwendal's glower to darken.

The door closed tightly behind him. Gisela stepped further into the room now that the level of privacy had increased, followed closely by Conrad and Wolfram's guard.

Yuuri spared a longer look toward the guard. He could not pretend to know Rupert Bleddyn well, but he had grown accustomed to seeing him in Wolfram's company during drills and countless patrols over the years, and Yuuri knew him to be particularly loyal. Rupert couldn't have been any older than Wolfram, with dark brown hair cut short and a pair of somber light blue eyes. He was built like Wolfram, too, more speed and grace than brute strength, and he wore his blue Bielefeld uniform in the same impeccable manner.

Rupert's expression was pensive, almost conflicted. He lowered his eyes when Yuuri looked at him.

Yuuri couldn't tell if it was in respect or shame.

"You wanted to talk," Yuuri said when Gisela didn't immediately begin.

He tore his eyes away from Rupert to look at her. She appeared just as unsettled, but more angry than apologetic. Then again, Gisela was known for her temper—if it could even be called that. Yuuri didn't think he'd ever seen her in a true rage. She simply knew how to give commands well.

"Has Prince Wolfram spoken with you?" she asked. Her voice sounded hard and clipped.

Yuuri's eyes widened in slight surprise as he replied, "About?"

"About my meeting with him three weeks ago," Gisela said.

"N-No," Yuuri stammered. He shifted in his chair in an attempt to ease his discomfort. "I didn't know he saw you. I told him to, but…"

Something in Gisela's expression cut him off. If he had never seen her look truly furious before, he certainly was now.

He looked passed her to Conrad and Rupert, both of whom had come to a stop at the end of the table. Conrad's usually pleasant face was marred by a discontented frown. Rupert looked correspondingly grim.

"He's pregnant," Gisela announced.

Yuuri did a double take, ripped his eyes off of Rupert to swing them back toward Gisela, and when he began to consider that he might have been imagining things he hissed an unintentionally vehement sounding, "… _what_?"

"Prince Wolfram is pregnant," Gisela repeated.

For a few moments Yuuri felt as if something inside of him had taken a heavy plunge, spiraling into an uncontrollable free-fall. He gripped the edge of his desk to steady himself, but it was of little help.

"He's _pregnant_?" he gaped.

"Yes, Your Majesty."

Yuuri sputtered. The last shreds of the fifteen-year-old he used to be told him to deny it and question the validity of Gisela's statement, but fourteen years of experience and a myriad of lectures under Gunter's tutelage staid the impulse.

While he knew Gisela's announcement to be quite possible, it still provoked a considerable amount of shock.

"Since _when_?"

"I was hoping you would be more accommodating and assist in establishing a feasible date," Gisela said, "as Prince Wolfram refuses to provide such information."

"You mean when we… uhh…"

"Bearing in mind that he has already shown evidence of certain symptoms, I gave Prince Wolfram an estimate of three months."

"_Until it's born_?" Yuuri squeaked.

Gisela paused a moment and seemed as if it were a struggle not to look amused. "No, Your Majesty," she replied, managing to retain her serious expression once her mouth had stopped twitching, "three months gestation."

"Oh… okay…" Yuuri said with some relief. He loosened his grip on the edge of his desk but still sat quite stiffly in his chair.

"Of course, that may not be entirely accurate depending on the date of conception."

Yuuri tried to think through his shock long enough to come up with the appropriate answer.

He and Wolfram didn't have sex without protection very often. Wolfram didn't like to and Yuuri hadn't wanted any surprises. They hadn't used anything on Wolfram's birthday, but given that that had only been two days ago it obviously couldn't have happened then. The only time before that which Yuuri could remember was…

"It had to have been Christmas," he said. He remembered the night because he and Wolfram had nearly tumbled off the narrow bed in the room his parents still kept for him, and they'd made an effort to be quiet and go unheard by his parents and nosy older brother.

He didn't think they'd been successful. Shori had smirked at him over breakfast the next morning.

Gisela stared at him blankly, as if she couldn't comprehend his response.

Conrad eased the confusion. "The twenty-fifth of December," he explained.

Yuuri watched as Gisela's eyes narrowed. He thought she must have been doing some quick mental calculations. She didn't look pleased with her findings once she was done.

"The child's developing like a human," she said. "Prince Wolfram should be around eighteen weeks. He'll be showing any day now if he isn't already."

"He is…" Yuuri said, sucking in a surprised breath.

He'd seen it. He'd _felt_ it. He'd put his hand flush on it. He'd commented on it when he'd seen Wolfram naked, but he hadn't even considered that _this_ was what it meant. He hadn't stopped the think that it was more than normal weight gain, because even though he _knew_ that this could happen after he'd been forced to learn about it in a particularly awkward lesson years ago, his brain still wasn't wired to _think_ it even when it was staring him right in the face.

And Wolfram… Wolfram had looked into his eyes and smiled like nothing was wrong, distracted him with sex and didn't even bother to _tell_ him that they already had a nice little consequence from an earlier encounter.

"Oh my God, he's pregnant," Yuuri said, looking through Gisela, Conrad and Rupert as a sick, swooping sensation traveled down his chest into his gut. "That… that must be what I felt… when I tried to heal him. I thought it was strange, but I didn't… and even when I saw it I just… I never put two and two together…"

"I sensed it after one of our scheduled drills," Rupert admitted. He stepped forward when he spoke, and finally raised his eyes to meet Yuuri's with a rueful gaze. "Wieland, Capet, and I encouraged His Majesty to see Miss Gisela on your orders."

"And you didn't… you didn't _tell_ me?"

"His Majesty forbade me from speaking of it."

Yuuri glanced from Rupert to Conrad. "And this… Is this what you thought?"

Conrad nodded and frowned gravely.

"Oh my God," Yuuri said again. "Oh my God, why didn't he _say_ anything to me?"

"Prince Wolfram was far from pleased when I informed him of his condition," Gisela said. "He proceeded to refuse treatment."

"He _refused_…?"

"I warned him of the potential consequences," Gisela continued. "He is of an average age to be carrying his first child but still quite young to be handling a human pregnancy. There will likely be side-effects. It could interfere with his own development, not to mention the risks to the child."

Yuuri brought one of his hands to his mouth, too dismayed to do much else.

"Why didn't I think…?" he mumbled. After shutting his eyes and taking a moment to get his bearings, he asked, "So… so when can we expect it to… I mean, when will it be… born…?"

"Now that I know a rough date of conception, I expect mid-September," Gisela replied. "That is if it continues to grow as a human, of course, which is likely for the duration of Prince Wolfram's pregnancy and at least the first few years of the child's life. With Prince Wolfram being only ninety-seven there is a very good chance it may need to be removed earlier."

Yuuri swallowed convulsively. Gisela's answer didn't resolve his worries entirely, but it proved at least moderately reassuring. If they had a good four to five months until it… until it… well, he thought that was plenty of time to cope and try to straighten things out and get used to the idea that he was going to be a father again.

Truthfully, he hadn't spent a lot of time considering the idea of having kids. It had been a passing thought every once in a while, when he read letters from Greta or saw some of the noble children at play, but Wolfram had never expressed any interest and with the way their relationship had been going it hadn't seemed like a good idea to push him on the subject. There wasn't any rush, he'd told himself. They'd only been married four years. He might have aged but he didn't think he was _old_, though he might complain about it when someone tried to make it seem like a big deal.

He'd thought they could afford to take their time, spend a while trying to get their relationship sorted out before worrying about all the other things.

Apparently he needed to worry about it now.

"You mentioned you felt the child?" Gisela said in a voice that had lost a bit of its hard edge.

"Yeah," Yuuri replied, glancing back up at her. "I was healing him and I felt something, but I just thought it was his magic reacting to the situation."

"Lord Weller informed me that you believed Prince Wolfram to be having some sort of an attack."

"Conrad said Wolfram used to have these fits, but… I don't know what could have caused it. I mean, he hasn't really been himself lately, but I'd never seen anything like that before."

Gisela's lips pressed together in a firm line. "Under normal circumstances perhaps I wouldn't be too concerned. He was known to have them as a child. Increased stress could very well be a factor, but in his condition and with his history…"

"You don't think it's going to hurt him, is it?" Yuuri rushed to ask. "If he's in danger, I…"

He didn't want to finish the thought.

There was a part of him that wondered if he should be more concerned for the child, too, and he felt a bit heartless that it only came as something of an afterthought, but he was still trying to process the turn of events. He could only focus on so much at once. For now, Wolfram came first. Everything else could come later.

"It's difficult to say without performing a full examination," Gisela said, her voice a little lower, a little softer, like she was trying to be reassuring without sugarcoating her answer. "In some ways his heart was damaged thirteen years ago during the incident with the boxes. It works sufficiently to keep him healthy, but with the additional stress of a child… I'd like to monitor him carefully."

Yuuri frowned and nodded, dragging a tense hand through his hair. "I'll talk to him…" he said, "… make sure he sees you."

Gisela nodded in return. "I will, of course, be happy to conduct private examinations within your chambers."

"Right. He knows that. I… I'll sort this out with him."

"I would also request to be informed the next time Prince Wolfram experiences one of these attacks," Gisela said carefully. "There is a chance I may be able to help. Lady Julia kept extensive notes before her death. I believe she might have written about his episodes."

Yuuri nodded again, kept his hand on his head and experienced the strange throb he always felt somewhere in his chest when he was reminded of Susannah Julia and the friends they both shared.

Gisela paused then, watching him as if she expected more. When he said nothing, she asked, "Are you alright, Your Majesty?"

"Yeah," he said. It sounded strained so he cleared his throat and tried again. "Yeah, just… in shock, I guess. I honestly wasn't expecting anything like this, and now that I know it just… seems so obvious."

Rupert's voice was low and penitent when he spoke up. "I apologize for not informing you sooner, Your Majesty."

Yuuri shook his head to reassure him. "No, it's fine. I only told you to make Wolfram see Gisela. I didn't say anything about you telling me about it after. Just… keep an eye on Wolfram. Make sure he doesn't try to do something reckless."

Rupert nodded and straightened with a quiet, "Yes, Your Majesty."

Sometime later, once Gisela had soothed his worries as much as any of them possibly could, she and Rupert turned to exit the office, leaving Conrad behind.

Yuuri's godfather had kept himself distant for much of the discussion, commenting only when necessary and waiting for the worst of it to end before approaching Yuuri's desk. He came up to the side of it and leaned against the edge, dropping the act of bodyguard to focus fully on friend and confidante. Yuuri appreciated the conversion and smiled gratefully.

"Do you wish I'd told you sooner?" Conrad asked, looking faintly guilty.

Yuuri thought about it for a moment but couldn't see how hearing about it before would have been any better than hearing about it now, except that he would have already gotten the confrontation with Wolfram over with.

"No, you were right," he admitted. "I would have freaked out even more. Now I just… I don't know why I didn't _see_."

"You saw enough to note that something was wrong," Conrad reminded him.

"I thought it was something else," Yuuri said.

"Perhaps there's more. There must be if Wolfram failed to tell you."

"I guess you're right…"

"Will you speak with him now?" Conrad asked, quietly, as comforting as possible.

Yuuri heaved a sigh and hunched over his desk, dropping the side of his face into one of his hands. "I have to," he said. "Otherwise he'll just keep acting like everything's okay."

He didn't want to. He was still afraid that calling out Wolfram on his behavior and demanding some sort of an answer was only going to make the situation worse, but he'd given Wolfram the chance to bring it up on his own. It'd been three weeks since Wolfram had found out about the baby and he'd chosen not to say anything, hadn't even seemed as if there were anything to tell.

That couldn't continue. Hiding things, keeping secrets… that wasn't what a marriage was supposed to be about.

What ever happened to trust? What happened to honesty? When had that changed? When had their relationship become so broken that Wolfram didn't feel the need to _talk _to him anymore? Where had they gone wrong?

What had _he_ done wrong?

What the hell was Wolfram thinking?

* * *

Wolfram gave a start when Yuuri returned to their room that same afternoon, though that was likely due to the fact that Yuuri pushed the door closed a little too hard and it settled into the frame with a resounding 'bang.'

His husband sat in one of the chairs by the windows, taking afternoon tea by himself. Yuuri paused just long enough to look him over, noting the loose manner in which he'd taken to wearing his clothing. The black of Wolfram's jacket had something of a slimming effect, but he didn't wear his belt as snug as usual. Otherwise he looked fairly normal, maybe a little tired and pale. Yuuri had seen him look worse.

"Why didn't you _tell_ me?" Yuuri asked, trying and failing to keep his voice calm.

Wolfram's eyes flickered for just a second before he was back in control, glancing down to his tea as he gently set the cup and saucer onto the coffee table.

"Forgive me for not understanding," he said. "Would you care for some tea?"

"_No_," Yuuri bit back, "I _don't_ want any tea. I want you to stop acting like nothing's wrong. You're not an idiot, Wolf."

"And yet I still have no idea what you could possibly be referring to."

He reached for one of the finger sandwiches neatly arranged on a serving platter by the tray of tea, cream, and sugar.

Yuuri was used to being ignored, but that didn't mean he liked it. Frustration bubbled in his stomach, urging him on. He marched across the room and deftly pushed the coffee table aside, standing between it and Wolfram and effectively denying his husband any means of a distraction via food and beverage.

"_Why didn't you tell me_?" he asked, a little harsher the second time around.

Wolfram tensed and glanced up, staring into his eyes to study them the way he always did when he wanted to make sure there hadn't been a transformation.

Usually it made Yuuri feel ashamed, that Wolfram didn't trust him to be able to control his temper around him. Other times he could feel a little more sympathetic, knowing the level of concern and discomfort his infrequent transformation always caused.

This time it only made him feel more frustrated.

"You don't have to worry about him coming out," he snapped. "This is all me."

The set of Wolfram's features was smooth and impassive, but Yuuri noticed his back and shoulders lose a little of their sudden tension.

"Would you care to explain what this is about?" Wolfram asked.

"You're the one who has some explaining to do," Yuuri countered.

"I don't know what you m-"

"You're pregnant," Yuuri cut him off.

Wolfram grew quiet. His expression never faltered, stiff and unmovable, but his eyes narrowed and one of his hands twitched in his lap, so close to his thickening waistline. Eventually he shifted his eyes away to glance out the window.

"Who told you?" he wondered, a little too calmly.

Yuuri didn't know what bothered him more—that Wolfram had hid it from him for so long or that he didn't even bother to deny it after all of his attempts to play innocent.

"I don't think that matters," Yuuri said. "It should have been you, but you obviously didn't want to."

Wolfram's hard gaze returned to him. "Who told you?" he asked again.

Yuuri frowned, considered objecting a second time, but didn't think Wolfram would consent to continue the conversation without an answer.

"Gisela," he replied.

The muscles around Wolfram's eyes tightened as he muttered a quiet curse. "She had no right."

"_I_ had a right," Yuuri insisted. "I already knew something was up. What, you thought you could keep hiding it for a while? I _felt_ it, Wolf. I _saw_ it. I might be an idiot but even _I_ would have figured it out eventually. What were you going to do then?"

He didn't receive a response. Wolfram turned away again to stare listlessly out the window. It didn't seem as if he felt much for the topic, maybe a vague annoyance and carefully suppressed anger, but he was being surprisingly calm considering the circumstances.

Yuuri wondered if it was because he was still hiding something, or if it was just another one of his constantly fluctuating moods.

"Are you going to tell me why you didn't say anything?"

"I don't know," Wolfram said.

"You don't know what?"

"I don't know why I didn't tell you."

"That's a lie," Yuuri accused.

"I suppose I didn't think it was important," Wolfram said.

"And what the hell would make you think that? This isn't some little thing, Wolf. It's a _baby_."

Curiously, Wolfram flinched. When he shifted in the chair uncomfortably, his hand grazed his stomach. Yuuri watched in concern as Wolfram ripped it away and set it on the armrest instead.

"I didn't tell you because I don't want to have a child," he whispered, perhaps thinking Yuuri wouldn't hear him if he didn't speak loudly enough.

Something thick and heavy rose to clog Yuuri's throat. He swallowed and forced it back down.

"And, what? You thought pretending it wasn't happening and then not telling me about it was going to make it go away?"

"I don't know," Wolfram said again. "I wanted time to prepare myself."

"Is that why you had one of your old fits the other night?" Yuuri asked.

Wolfram's head turned back to him, his expression confused. "Who told you about-"

"Conrad."

"Oh…"

"He said you used to have them when you were a kid, that everyone thought it was because of what people told you about the humans, that you had nightmares…"

Wolfram didn't say anything to agree with the assumption or deny it.

The lack of an explanation only frustrated Yuuri more. He felt like he was stumbling around in the dark, losing his way at every turn with no hope of a way out.

Finally he asked the question he hadn't wanted to voice because of the sick feeling it sent swirling around in his gut, the question he hadn't even wanted to think about because of what it would mean for their relationship.

"Is it because of me?" he wondered.

Wolfram blinked, bewildered, and slowly said, "… I don't understand."

"Is it because I'm human?" Yuuri clarified. He tried to stay calm but couldn't be sure a little bitterness hadn't worked its way out.

Again, Wolfram was silent, but his face said everything. At first he tried to keep his expression indifferent, but it soon crumpled, twisting as if tortured by a pain or a conflict Yuuri had not noticed and could not hope to understand. Wolfram looked at him, so dismal and helpless that Yuuri had to turn away.

He stepped back, away from the small sitting area by the windows. He made for the bed, raising a hand to grip one of the posts and resting his forehead against the hard wood as he closed his eyes against reality.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked.

He had to force himself to breathe. The truth of the matter was like a punch to his gut. It left him staggering, trying to come to grips with it without knowing how.

"What was I supposed to say?" Wolfram responded quietly.

"'Back off, Yuuri, you disgust me' would have worked pretty well," Yuuri said. He laugh a hollow, humorless laugh.

"You don't-"

"Stop _lying_ to me!"

Yuuri whipped around to glare at him, angry at Wolfram and himself and the entire situation. This shouldn't be happening. They should be happy. They should be a family.

"Why did you even marry me then? Why did you even bother to pretend in the first place?"

"Because I-"

"If you can't even stand to be _touched_ by me-"

"That's not-"

"-why did you agree to go through with it? Why not end it before I felt _anything _for you? Or did it amuse you to have some pathetic human following you around like a puppy?"

"_Stop it_!" Wolfram shouted, his voice suddenly high and shrill in the large room.

Yuuri immediately snapped his mouth shut, watching Wolfram with a sad, tormented frown.

Wolfram hadn't risen from his chair, but he leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, hands brought to his face to press against his eyes.

"I don't understand it," he whispered. "I thought I was over it. I wanted to be married. I still…"

Yuuri swallowed again and forced the disappointment and the anger and the frustration and the hurt back to a place where he could keep them better contained. Accusations weren't going to solve anything, he had to remind himself. Blaming Wolfram wasn't the right way to handle things when it was obvious that this was difficult for him. Maybe Yuuri had no way to comprehend it, but if they had any hope of getting through it together, he had to at least try.

It wasn't as if he hadn't known before that Wolfram had an aversion toward humans. Even after he'd accepted Yuuri, even after they'd taken Greta in, there were times when Wolfram made derisive comments about certain people or looked displeased by certain arrangements. Yuuri didn't think he and Greta could possibly be enough to help Wolfram overcome over eighty years of hatred, no matter how much Wolfram had come to care for them.

Fourteen years of friendship and love was nothing compared to eighty years full of disgust and hostility.

He'd been able to believe that maturity brought change, that love brought with it new values and beliefs. Wolfram had let him believe it. Maybe Wolfram had even believed it himself. But at some point the truth won out. It always did. Neither of them could trick themselves into believing that life was that easy. Not forever.

Hate was much too strong of an enemy. Yuuri knew that already. He'd known it years ago.

When it came down to it Wolfram was only nineteen, he told himself—nineteen and married to someone the world would always see as a much older man. Yuuri could admit he didn't know how he would have coped if their positions were reversed.

He could understand that much.

All they had to do was figure out the rest.

Slowly he returned to Wolfram, reached out to gently take hold of his wrists and pull his hands from his face. For a split second he wondered if touch was really the best thing for him right now, but he felt more confident about it when Wolfram didn't flinch away. Wolfram looked at him with sadness and shame. Yuuri lowered himself to his knees in front of Wolfram's chair and held his hands securely.

"If you don't want to have the baby," he began, deliberately slow, "then we don't have to have it."

He hated saying it. The thought of sacrificing the life of an innocent child, no matter what their reason was, made his insides roll and knot together. It felt callous and wrong, but Wolfram was too important to him. Forcing it didn't make it right.

Wolfram stared at him in wonder, his lips parted and his eyes going wide.

"Do you mean that?" he asked with a breath of disblief.

Yuuri's frown was the only sign that he had any reservations. "I told you the other day," he explained, "that I want to give you everything."

Wolfram's mouth trembled. Suddenly his eyes took on a curious sheen and he pulled one of his hands away to hide behind it. Yuuri let him and kept the remaining hand in both of his, alternatively squeezing it tight and sliding his fingers over the soft skin. He didn't say anything else, not to reassure Wolfram, or tease him for the emotions he couldn't control, or encourage him to sway one way or the other. He sat and he waited, doing nothing more than reminding Wolfram that he was there.

It took a few minutes, but Wolfram eventually gained control of himself again. His hand lowered once he was able to fix his expression and force it to remain flat and distant. He sniffed coldly.

"Don't be ridiculous," he said, with something of his normal arrogant tone. "I am carrying the king's child. I can't simply do away with it because of a lingering case of childish bigotry."

Yuuri couldn't hold back a smile—not in relief for Wolfram's refusal, but because of his apparent willingness to try and overcome the burden of prejudice in his mind.

"The king says it's okay," Yuuri told him gently.

"The prince consort appreciates the king's good grace," Wolfram lightly mocked him, "but as propriety dictates a different course, the prince consort will do as he must."

Yuuri didn't know how to argue, so he simply didn't say anything.

It didn't seem right, tolerating it just because of societal expectations.

But then it didn't seem right not to either.

He wondered how much worse Wolfram's conflict must be when Yuuri thought his was bad enough.

"Yuuri," Wolfram said, his attitude now more serious than playful as he met Yuuri's eyes and squeezed his hand firmly.

"If I had any intention of doing away with it, I would have done it already," he admitted.

Yuuri's chest tightened. He wanted to say something else, some other reassurance, some other means of comfort, but he had no words—none that would be good enough, none that had any hope of describing what Wolfram did to his heart.

Instead he nodded and clasped Wolfram's hand and let the silence descend.

**TBC…**


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Kyou Kara Maou or any of its characters.

**Beta-ed by:** G. Much of the plot was also devised in conjunction with her. I owe her my deepest and heartfelt thanks for all her years of service and friendship.

**Warnings:** Mpreg (and resulting pregnancy issues), angst, depression, language, adult themes, dark themes, religious themes, racial issues (demon and human), violence, blood, torture, sexual content, sexual content of dubious consent, non-consensual sex, original characters (because using the same old villains gets boring), character death (most likely minor, but I have considered offing a major character or two that is not Yuuri or Wolfram). Various other warnings may apply at a later date. I will do my best to update the list as need be. It is very likely that this fic will be quite dark in nature. I apologize if that is not to your liking.

**Pairings(s):** Yuuri/Wolfram

**Setting:** Fourteen years post-season three. Yuuri is 29 and Wolfram is 97 (19).

**Rating:** M

**A/N: **In this chapter Wolfram can be a little callous in his thoughts about and attitude toward the baby, not especially cruel but not affectionate and in some ways neglectful and self-involved. I apologize if anyone finds that upsetting. He's slowly working through it.

* * *

_**Eternal Light**_

by Mikage

**Chapter Three**

"You're carrying quite large…"

Gisela had a strip of measuring tape at hand, the sort the tailors and seamstresses used to take his measurements when he ordered new clothing. She spread it out along the swell of his stomach, mid-way through another one of her fussy examinations. Every once in a while she would cluck her tongue or make some other noise of disapproval to remind him that she still had not forgiven him for walking out on her five weeks earlier.

Real anger could be difficult to induce in Gisela, and forgiveness even more difficult to acquire when one managed it.

Wolfram did what he could to ignore her—no easy task when she insisted upon poking and prodding at him with her cold, relentless hands. The most he could do was refuse to look at her and speak only when it was necessary. None of it seemed to appease her. If anything it only made her temper worse.

"Does that mean anything?" Yuuri asked.

Gisela hummed as if to say she couldn't be sure. Wolfram thought she should have just come out and said it and saved them all the trouble of trying to get it out of her.

He sat very close to the edge of the bed in order to give Gisela the appropriate proximity in which to carry out her work, which she claimed needed to be done on a weekly basis in order to monitor the baby's progress. After her many warnings on the matter of his own health, Wolfram was sure there was more to it than that. She and Yuuri kept exchanging looks across his bloated body—Yuuri's gaze more questioning and Gisela's reassuring.

Naturally she would save all her reassurances for Yuuri. She'd met Wolfram with little more than a prickly frown and narrowed eyes since the first examination Yuuri had persuaded him to consent to two weeks ago.

Yuuri sat beside him fretting like a mother hen, occasionally clasping Wolfram's hand before releasing it and fidgeting about like he wanted to touch something else but didn't dare try. Wolfram had no idea why Yuuri bothered to restrain himself, but he assumed after their confrontation about the child his husband was feeling especially wary.

Wolfram was making an effort to be comfortable. It was no easy feat. If it wasn't Gisela's cold hands or Yuuri's restlessness that set him on edge, there was also the state of his body that troubled him.

He felt Gisela's comment might be a little too polite. In the month since he'd been informed of his condition, his stomach had gone from firm and more or less flat to a little less firm and conspicuously not flat. It seemed to expand more each week. Only a fortnight ago he'd been able to get away with loosening his belt while continuing to wear most of his old clothes. The same couldn't be said for the present. He'd been forced to concede defeat when his pants would no longer close and now attired himself in clothing modified to allow for the extra weight and changing shape.

The sight and feel of his stomach disturbed him. He made a valiant attempt not to look at it while he kept his shirt raised up to his chest to allow for Gisela's observation and analysis, but it was not always avoidable. He saw it every time he looked into the mirror. When he crossed his arms over his body, they would inevitably brush against it. Once or twice he'd even awoken in the mornings to find one of his hands resting over top of it, as if subconsciously protecting the child within.

"Well, we'll be sure to keep an eye on you," Gisela said, though Wolfram knew it was meant more for Yuuri's sake than his. "You've measured larger than average in three consecutive examinations, but as you were thin to begin with I'll deem it an encouraging sign. You're doing very well at twenty weeks."

"Halfway over already," Wolfram's mother commented.

She'd pulled up a chair to the side of the bed but sat more toward the end of it so as not to get in Gisela's way. Wolfram did not dislike her presence, but he wasn't particularly cheered by it either. Rather than an additional source of comfort, he viewed it as simply one more person there to tut, hover, and gawk at him.

He was embarrassed to admit that his initial behavior had earned him quite the severe lecture from his mother, who was not the lecturing type of woman by any means. He could recall only a handful of instances in which he'd upset her enough to warrant one. Most of the remaining discipline he'd received as a child had come through Gwendal or Waltorana. Unfortunately, refusing to accept the appropriate treatment and subsequently keeping his condition hidden had drawn out the "mother" in his mother—a side of her very few people ever got to see.

Wolfram felt only mildly comforted by the fact that her anger had been aroused not because of his feelings on the matter or the current conflict raging within him, but because he'd put himself in unnecessary danger by avoiding treatment. Once her temper had been worn out—_after _she'd succeeded in making him feel like a spoiled twenty-five-year-old again—she'd returned to some of her normal busybody behavior, which included coddling him at every opportunity and enthusiastically filling her new role as grandmother.

"Have you been feeling any discomfort?" Gisela asked.

Wolfram almost slipped his shirt back down when she finally took the measuring tape away, but her hands were quick to return without it in order to gently prod at him a little longer.

"Other than your incessant need to poke at me, I presume," he said.

"You presume correctly," she returned in a voice clipped with displeasure.

"My ankles feel sore," he consented to reveal.

"That's normal, of course. Prop your feet up on a pillow when you're in bed or a footstool when you're sitting. It may help."

Wolfram had to suppress an amused smile when Yuuri instantly grabbed one of the extra pillows not supporting Wolfram's back and summarily shoved it beneath his feet. Sometimes when Yuuri did such sweet things and put in so much effort to make him comfortable, Wolfram had to remind himself that this was not an amusing situation at all.

It did warm his heart, however, that Yuuri could still care for him so much even now that he knew of Wolfram's shameful bias. Wolfram found those moments to be the most uplifting, and he thought that if Yuuri was willing to be patient and attempt to understand, he could eventually surpass this mess he now found himself in.

"And you've had no more nausea?" Gisela asked. Her lips gave a brief twitch as well.

"Right," Wolfram said. "I haven't been ill for some time now."

"Have you experienced quickening yet?"

Wolfram blinked his confusion. "Pardon me?"

Gisela responded with a look of exasperation. "Did Julia never go over pregnancy and delivery with you?"

"She might have tried. I can't recall having any desire to listen."

If his knowledge of sex before Yuuri had been basic and limited to the mechanics, his knowledge of pregnancy was even less. He knew how to make a child, he knew where the child came out of in a female, and he knew how it was removed from a male. Anything in between had been of no particular interest to him.

It _remained_ of no particular interest to him.

"Have you felt movement from the child?"

Wolfram could not be sure he was successful in keeping the revulsion from his face. "Yes, I have," he admitted.

"You didn't tell me that!" Yuuri exclaimed.

He frowned enough that Wolfram felt momentarily guilty. Then Yuuri fidgeted again, and Wolfram was sure his husband was tempted to plant his hands on his stomach in the hopes of feeling it himself. It was likely only concern for Wolfram's reaction that held him back.

"What does it feel like?" Yuuri asked, his voice a breath of awe. He did a remarkable job keeping his gaze fixed on Wolfram's eyes rather than staring at his belly.

"It feels very much like there's something trapped inside of me," Wolfram informed him.

"That's not a very good description."

"I think it's a fairly accurate description."

"It's like little wings brushing against your insides," his mother elaborated for him.

"Like when you've got butterflies in your stomach?" Yuuri wondered.

"Almost like that, yes. But a little more substantial," his mother replied. She had a small, wistful smile on her face. "I remember when I felt it with each of my babies. I just fell so in love," she sighed.

Wolfram remembered the first moment he'd felt it—one morning over a breakfast of pastries and fruit—but he could not say he'd fallen immediately in love. At first he'd thought it was little more than his bowels acting up. It was only when he'd experienced the little fluttery feeling at regular intervals for an entire week that he realized what it really was.

He found no joy in it. At most he felt a mild sense of dread. It made the situation real in a way no announcement from Gisela ever could. Coupled with his burgeoning stomach, the frequent quivering movement made the reality of his condition much more difficult to ignore.

He already felt like a terrible parent. Wolfram had no doubts that the experience would have been different if the child he was carrying hadn't been human, and that disgusted him more than the fact that it was human in the first place. He despised the thoughts that had taken root in his mind but had so far been unable to force them out. They haunted him in a way they hadn't since he'd been young. The only difference this time was that he knew they were wrong.

It didn't stop them. It simply made him hate himself more.

The only redeeming factor, the only source of comfort he could find in all of this was that the child was Yuuri's. That was of course what made it human, but it also made it a piece of the man he loved. If only he could reconcile the two. If only he could find some way to transcend the darkness in his mind and focus solely on the good.

"How's he doing?" Yuuri asked when Gisela had gone some moments without making any other comments.

"Very well," she said, and for once she sounded pleased. "So far his heart has been strong and steady. If we can find some method of controlling any forthcoming attacks, I'll worry less about the strain the child's putting on his body."

Yuuri nodded seriously, swallowed, bit his lip, and then finally asked, "And the baby?"

Wolfram grabbed his hand and squeezed, stared directly into his eyes and hoped Yuuri understood that it was alright for him to care about the child, too.

"Strong and healthy as far as I'm able to tell," Gisela replied. "It's astounding how much energy it's emitting. I've never felt so much coming from an unborn child before."

"Could that be a sign that it will have the ability to perform magic?" Wolfram wondered.

He would like that. He thought it would make this more bearable, if his human child could do magic like Yuuri.

"We won't know for certain until it's older," Gisela said. "Even fully human children emit some sort of energy signature, a life force that's detectable by magic when they're in the womb. Of course, I've never known it to be this strong."

Wolfram pondered this information for a few moments, considering it seriously, before he decided that the fact that his child exceeded anything Gisela had ever felt before was enough to temporarily satisfy him.

It didn't solve anything, but it was something of a silver lining.

When Gisela finally finished her assessment and pulled her hands away, Wolfram lifted one of his own from the mattress and gently placed it against the expanding flesh.

The movement was not lost on Yuuri, who smiled and squeezed his other hand.

"That's all for now," Gisela announced. If she noticed as well, she made no mention of it. "Send for me if you experience further discomfort, especially if you feel any abdominal cramping. Otherwise I'll be sure to return on schedule next week."

"Thanks, Gisela," Yuuri said.

Wolfram didn't bother to watch as Gisela left the room, choosing instead to look between Yuuri and his mother or the wall of windows directly across from him. The soft 'thump-click' of the door closing announced her departure well enough. With it, Wolfram felt a wave of relief sweep through him. A tension he hadn't realized had come over him during her visit seeped from his shoulders and back to leave him resting more comfortably against the pillows.

He hazarded a quick look down at his stomach, agitated by the sight of stretched skin and the thought of what lay beneath it. He could not come to terms with the changes in his body. He'd never been as large as his older brothers, but he'd at least been in proper shape—had to be with the level and type of activity he'd engaged in. Gisela had already restricted him from strenuous exercise, which meant even the drills he'd previously been allowed to engage in were out of the question until some weeks after the child's birth.

Now he was… not fat, thank the Great One, but he was certainly softening around the edges. Wolfram thought his face was starting to look fuller, and his arms had lost some of the slight definition they'd had before.

He supposed the appropriate expression was "round with child."

It was not the most favorable of his appearances, surely.

Yuuri shifted beside him again, fussing over the state of his pillows and whatever else he could think of that might need to be fluffed or otherwise encouraged into a more bearable state. Wolfram rolled his eyes and looked at him like he expected he would one day look at his child when he or she had taken to misbehaving.

"If you're so anxious to touch it then you might as well do so," he said.

He watched as Yuuri froze in the process of readjusting the pillow he'd placed beneath his feet. Yuuri looked amazed, staring first into Wolfram's eyes before he let his gaze wander lower. Wolfram slipped his hand away from his stomach to give Yuuri an unobstructed view of the very distinct bump.

"Are you sure?" Yuuri asked once he'd swallowed through the buildup of 'emotional wimp' that seemed to have risen into his throat.

"Would I have offered if I wasn't?" Wolfram prompted him.

Yuuri shrugged then clambered back to his position beside him, still staring at the mound as if it was the first time he'd actually allowed himself to have a good look since he'd noticed Wolfram's increasing weight on his birthday.

With how cautious Yuuri had been recently, Wolfram imagined it probably was.

He quickly grew impatient as he waited there with his shirt hiked up, and finally grabbed one of Yuuri's hands to press it quite firmly against his curving stomach. Yuuri gave a start as if he meant to jerk his hand back, but Wolfram held it securely in place and stared quite determinedly into Yuuri's eyes.

He did not want his lingering issues to prevent Yuuri from enjoying a time in their lives Wolfram thought his husband to be well-suited for. It was already causing a strain within their marriage. Wolfram feared he was being selfish enough. He could not settle his thoughts as quickly as either of them might like, but he could try to see through them. The wonder on Yuuri's face and the warmth in his eyes was not a cure, but it was some of the best medicine he knew to take.

That look on Yuuri's face said everything—"Wow" and "You're beautiful" and "I'm so in love with you."

Wolfram couldn't think that he deserved it, wouldn't have blamed Yuuri if his husband had grown to revile his presence after he'd discovered the truth, but the fact that he _hadn't_ made Wolfram feel as if this hateful mark upon him was only temporary, as if anything were possible as long as they had each other.

Every now and then it had the opposite effect and made the conflict worst. But mostly it soothed him, sent his demons scurrying back to regroup and compose a new stratagem.

"Is it moving now?" Yuuri asked. Soon one hand was not enough for him and he moved the second to join it.

"It moves frequently," Wolfram said.

"I don't feel anything," his husband observed, sounding vaguely disappointed.

"You should be able to very soon," Wolfram's mother reassured him.

Gracefully she stood from her chair to approach the head of the bed. She didn't reach out to touch his stomach, but her hand brushed some of Wolfram's hair from his face as she watched and smiled benignly.

"You may also want to consider making an official announcement," she said.

"There are already rumors," Wolfram pointed out. "Anyone who looks at me can tell."

"There's no harm in making it official," his mother gently chided him. She settled herself against the very edge of the mattress. "The news of a child can have a dramatic effect on people. It gives the kingdom hope for the future."

She looked into his eyes earnestly, sending him silent reassurances—as if to say it mattered not to what race the child belonged. It remained a source of hope and love and joy for countless people either way. It meant life. As Yuuri's child it meant peace and salvation.

There was dignity in that. There was something good.

"We'll make it official then," Wolfram decided.

Yuuri's hands continued to caress his belly, slowly sliding across it as if to touch every last swollen inch.

"I'll ask Gunter to write it up and have it sent out by the end of the week," he said, then sighed and made a noise that sounded like a groan mixed with a whimper. "I should get to work but I don't want to go."

"Gwendal will come for you soon if you don't," Wolfram reminded him.

"I know. I guess I'll save him the trouble. Are you sure you'll be okay?"

He looked at Wolfram with such concern Wolfram could only smile in response.

"Yes, of course," he said.

"We'll go for a walk before lunch, hmm?" his mother suggested. "Then you can nap for a while and get some rest."

Yuuri breathed a sigh and pulled his hands away, rolling Wolfram's shirt back down to cover his stomach. Then his eyes met Wolfram's, warm and adoring as he asked, "Can I kiss you?"

There were times when Wolfram might have hesitated. His mother was present; his mind was not completely at ease. It was not the ideal situation for anything intimate, even for something so simple as a kiss goodbye.

But Wolfram felt alright for now. There was no sudden surge of panic, and he was as comfortable as he thought he ever would be, so he nodded to allow it.

Yuuri smiled and leaned forward. Their lips pressed together so briefly Wolfram didn't have the time to question it, take offense by it, or even truly appreciate it. As Yuuri pulled back, Wolfram experienced a sad flutter of the heart. He almost thought it might have been disappointment, but he said nothing of it and let Yuuri rise from the bed.

It would take time, he knew, before he could resolve his issues.

He hoped for all their sakes that he was strong enough to do it.

* * *

Pregnancy did strange things to his body.

The most obvious, of course, was his growing stomach. It continued to expand over the next fortnight, earning a few more curious hums and satisfied looks from Gisela, who kept careful notes and monitored his progress with a religious dedication. The added weight caused Wolfram's unsettling feelings to grow more persistent. It created quite a bit of physical discomfort as well, straining his back and swelling his ankles. Wolfram abhorred it. He was not so large that his mobility was cumbersome, but the soreness had a way of keeping him in bed for hours.

His skin felt dry, he was routinely exhausted, and he had frequent headaches. On the day his mother decided to inform him that the middle stretch was the easiest of the three, Wolfram glared darkly and refused to believe it. He'd yet to decide which he preferred—the nausea and the vomiting or the aches and constant fatigue caused by a body unused to operating at the swift pace required to sustain a human life.

There were few benefits that he could see, except that his hair seemed more lustrous and his nails looked particularly lovely, but as he was barely ever in the mood to be seen in public these days it made very little difference.

Yuuri claimed there were times when he looked "glowing." Wolfram could not see how this could possibly be the case when he felt no happier and certainly felt no more attractive. He assumed it must be his body acting of its own accord, emitting some sort of pregnancy waves that resonated around him and made him appear to radiate an unintentionally parental image. He had no means to control it, could not recognize it when it happened, and had no desire for it to continue if it brought even more attention to his condition than the belly already earned.

If anyone glowed it was Yuuri. His husband tried to seem calm and cool and collected, as if having a child or not having a child made absolutely no difference to him, but Wolfram could see right through the act. Yuuri's smiles were wider, his eyes were brighter, the lines on his face were somewhat less pronounced, and he strutted around the castle with a manner of pride Wolfram had never witnessed in him before. He had no doubt that the presence of a child made Yuuri feel young and virile. It was likely subconscious, set beneath the caution and concern, but there were moments—when they appeared together in public especially—that it wasn't so stringently contained.

That was where Wolfram thought his body's abnormal behavior arose from.

He would never claim to be a sexual being. Sometimes Wolfram wondered if he would have had more of a desire for it if Yuuri had been fully demon, but the more he considered it the more he came to decide that he simply had less of an interest entirely. It was raunchy and uncomfortable and, yes, it felt quite good at times, and there was something sort of sacred about it if done in the right manner, but for the most part it seemed like such a hassle, good for producing children and the occasional pleasurable evening and very little else.

Yet he found himself… not craving it—that would be unseemly—but certainly his body's interest had been piqued more recently. There was something about Yuuri's demeanor that seemed rather appealing. Wolfram thought it was the pride, the way Yuuri carried himself straighter and got that look on his face that made him seem quite pleased with himself. Wolfram had always been appreciative of confidence. He could even acknowledge it as something to be desired in humans if they expressed it in the correct way—in battle, perhaps, as it meant a worthy opponent.

In the case of his husband, it made his current conflict even worse. His mind kept shouting between "human" and "Yuuri" and "king," never quite able to settle on a single thought, while his body shouted a merry "hello, you're quite attractive, no matter what your heritage might be."

According to an Earthen book Yuuri had taken to occasionally reading aloud from before bed, this development was caused by something the Earthlings called "hormones."

Wolfram had been tempted to ask Gisela if such things existed here, as none of the books he'd stolen from the library during his days of sex self-education had mentioned anything of the sort, but he never saw her without Yuuri or his mother around and the way she kept prodding at him tended to dampen his mood.

Some nights he watched Yuuri dress for bed. It was easiest on the few evenings a week Yuuri supped among the court in the Great Hall without him or else returned from his office late and Wolfram could pretend to be sleeping. His place on the far side of the bed made his covert observations easily accomplished, as the wardrobe was in his direct line of sight and Yuuri never bothered with mirrors at night. He was safe from notice, but just in case he made sure not to open his eyes fully, merely shifted his head into the proper angle to be able view the routine with his eyes partially closed.

When he managed to pull the "Yuuri" thoughts into the forefront of his brain rather than the other two, Wolfram had to acknowledge that his husband was rather good-looking. Any plainness in his appearance that Yuuri might insist was apparent on Earth was completely lost in this world. Perhaps his jaw was not as strong as Gwendal's, or his chin as tough as Adalbert's, but he had a very pleasing face in spite of it. His best facial feature was his eyes of course—so dark, and with such an intriguing shape—and his lips were soft and full, "kissable"… or so Wolfram's mother said.

Yuuri wore his hair short, even shorter now than when he'd been a teenager, carelessly styled with a few quick swipes of a brush and the slide and rustle of long fingers from front to back. He'd likely come to wear it that way because it was easy to upkeep and required very little work—if Yuuri cared little about keeping his clothes presentable, he cared even less about his hair—but Wolfram liked it because it reminded him of a soldier. It was more casual than refined, and it made Yuuri's face look a little narrower, a little older, but a little more open, too.

As he watched him through the dim light, however, Wolfram focused his gaze much more on Yuuri's body.

His husband always started out with his back mostly turned toward him, shuffling through the wardrobe for the nightclothes the maids would have put away while cleaning earlier in the day. When he found them, he set them within easy reach and began working on removing his day-clothes. His shoes always went first, kicked or toed off if he could manage it, pulled off with a quick lean forward on his more formal days when he would wear boots. Then it was his jacket, or his shirt if he'd removed his jacket in the office, soon followed by his pants. At this point Yuuri would turn slightly, just enough for Wolfram to see most of his back and parts of his front.

Wolfram used to think that as Yuuri grew he'd come to take after Shori and his father, and he did in certain respects. The shape of his face was very much like Shoma's, with Mama's nose and smile, and he matched Shori in height. That was where the stark similarities ended, however, because Shoma never used a sword or rode a horse and Shori spent most of his time sitting in front of a computer instead of playing baseball. Neither of them were especially large, and though Yuuri had never reached the height and width of Gwendal or Yozak or Adalbert, he was athletic where the rest of his family, save for Mama and her boundless energy, was not.

Yuuri's shoulders were broad. Usually this upset Wolfram because it was such an obvious change from scrawny teenager, but there was a part of him that thought it fitting for a king. If he was lucky, his thoughts would continue on that course and shift from "Yuuri" to "king" rather than "Yuuri" to "human."

The only other monarch he'd ever known to sit on the throne of the Great Demon Kingdom aside from the few months he'd been encouraged to claim it himself was his mother, and he supposed she looked like he'd expect a queen to look when she wasn't being lewd and childish. Deciding on what traits made an appropriate king was a little more difficult for him. He used the portraits in the portrait hall for examples, as none of the human kings he'd ever met seemed sufficient enough—not Belar or Lanzhil or Saralegui, and certainly not that poor simpleton Antoine Jean Pierre.

Yuuri's coloring and foreign features made him look nothing like the previous kings of the Demon Kingdom, but the broad shoulders were there in their warrior kings. The Great One had broad shoulders, or at least he appeared to in his portraits. Wolfram knew otherwise now, had seen with his own eyes that a more narrow set had been disguised beneath heavy capes and ample shoulder armor.

Even so, the Great One was the best point of comparison. He had the aura of "king" about him, an aura Yuuri had not quite been able to adopt, but his fuller frame more than made up for it.

Candlelight threw patterns of light and shadow over Yuuri's suntanned skin. The muscles of his shoulders and back moved as he set clothes aside and brought others closer, his arms bending and unfurling with a quiet strength—not arrogant or boastful, but modest and tacitly contained—toned from sword practice and baseball. Yuuri's torso was nicely defined, with just a thin smattering of dark hair in the center of his chest, a little more beneath his arms, his waist trim and his stomach flat.

After his shoulders, Wolfram liked Yuuri's legs the best. There must be something said for squatting on the ground in ridiculous looking padding, catching baseballs thrown at high speeds. Those long hours on the ball-field and frequent travel on horseback had shaped Yuuri's thighs and calves with thick muscle. Wolfram had never considered describing anything as "sexy" before, but he thought the word might be appropriate to use when it came to Yuuri's legs. He looked at them and he saw power.

Something warm spread through Wolfram's belly as he watched. His stomach gave a funny twist—but that could have just as easily been the child, he thought. It seemed to know no difference between night and day and often wiggled about when he was trying to sleep. But his heart certainly felt full, and his terrible musings on humanity were momentarily subdued by a sultry haze. His body felt charged with a primal energy, aching for something he'd never known himself to ache for.

It upset him, because he knew his body to be acting on a different path than his mind usually chose to take, a path he knew he should be following exclusively, but one he found himself unable to pursue.

The mattress dipped when Yuuri climbed up, shifted as Yuuri settled down behind him. Wolfram would have closed his eyes by now, his breathing a little uneven, his cheeks a little warm, his groin tingling a little too insistently.

Yuuri never noticed, lied with his chest to Wolfram's back and prepared himself for sleep. He brushed the hair from Wolfram's neck and shoulder, gently kissed his heated skin, placed his hand over Wolfram's heart and used his magic to calm it.

Finally he caressed the length of Wolfram's arm before briefly cupping his protruding stomach, rubbing it fondly, and then he let his hand fall away—so considerate—as he sighed into Wolfram's hair and drifted off to sleep.

No matter how exhausted Wolfram was, sleep did not come easy for him on those nights. He was stifled with dissatisfaction, too conscious of Yuuri's arm around him, of the warmth of Yuuri's chest against his back, of the thought that Yuuri's thick manhood was only inches behind him.

The child fluttered, but Wolfram felt empty.

* * *

He already knew Yuuri was going to be a sensational father.

Admittedly, his husband hadn't been the best with Greta—neither of them had been, if he were completely honest and discerning enough to examine his own faults—but as they'd both been much younger when they'd adopted her and Wolfram expected it had been done on something of a whim in the first place, he didn't think it was entirely fair to compare the two situations. They had been lucky before in that most of those who resided in the castle at the time had happily taken on some small part of Greta's upbringing.

A child of their own nurtured from conception to adulthood was going to be much different than taking in a ten-year-old girl already willing and capable of taking care of herself when the situation called for it. Naturally there would be maids and nannies and wet-nurses employed to see to the child's care when he and Yuuri were otherwise unable to, but he already recognized Yuuri as being the hands-on type. He'd more than likely want to feed it and hold it and play with it and probably just stand there and watch it much more than anyone would expect from a king.

On the contrary, Wolfram had no ambition to do such things. It was enough that he was bringing it into the world and sacrificing his body—and potentially his life—to do so. As he waited for that time which grew more imminent by the week—an anxious wait that was not helped by every one of Gisela's reminders that his young age made premature birth highly likely—Wolfram had come to the conclusion that it might be best for him to see the child only as much as was necessary and no more.

It reminded him of his father, so distant and at times uncaring, and his mother who'd been too busy with her other obligations to spend as much time with him as he'd wanted. It was a terrible decision he was making and he acknowledged that, but he could not make himself feel as Yuuri did. He could not force a happiness or a love that was not yet there.

Maybe it would be different when the time came. Maybe he would look upon that small face and feel affection and joy the way his mother implied he might. Maybe it would be enough that the child was strong and healthy—he prayed every night that it would be enough—and he could disregard its race as unimportant.

For the time being he focused on sleeping and eating and doing what was required to take care of himself during this time of discomfort and stress.

"You haven't thought of any names yet, have you?" Yuuri asked him one evening in their room.

He sounded as cautious as he always did when conversation turned to the child, but there was a hint of hope in his voice this time, like he thought this topic might be less distasteful for Wolfram than all the others.

Wolfram looked up from the book he was flipping through, one of the many Yuuri had purchased on Earth on the subject of pregnancy and parenting. He could not read it on his own, but he could look at the drawings of the child's growth in the womb. Even though he knew the book to be written strictly about the female body, Gisela assured him that beyond the actual birth, much of it was the same.

"If the child is a boy it will be named 'Yuuri,'" he said, and returned to considering the drawing of the child at twenty-three weeks—a recognizably shaped body with spindly little arms and legs.

He frowned as he thought his stomach looked bigger than the one shown in the picture.

"Tell me you're not serious," Yuuri groused.

He was changing for bed, pulling a pair of thin cotton pants up his legs.

Wolfram kept his eyes studiously glued to the book.

"Do I not look serious?" he asked.

"He'll be made fun of," Yuuri insisted.

"He will not be made fun of for bearing the name of his royal father."

"_I _was made fun of."

"The only people to poke fun at you were people on Earth," Wolfram reminded him. "Hardly anyone makes comments about your name here."

"Right. They're too caught up on the eyes and hair."

Yuuri fell heavily onto the bed once he was done, rolling onto his side to watch while Wolfram flipped the next page to examine the following picture.

"Have you not noticed how popular your name has become since you became king?" Wolfram wondered. "I guarantee a large portion of the boys fourteen and younger that reside in the capital are named Yuuri."

"You've _got_ to be kidding."

"I assure you I'm not. The same happened while my mother was queen. Everyone was naming their daughters 'Cecilie.'"

"Why don't we just name it after you if it's a boy?" Yuuri asked.

"I am not the king," Wolfram answered simply.

"'Wolfram's a much better name than 'Yuuri.'"

"Be that as it may, I would prefer that he be named after you."

Yuuri heaved a sigh and seemed to accept defeat. He leaned upon one of his elbows to prop the side of his face in his hand, staring at Wolfram a bit too intently for his liking. Wolfram always knew what Yuuri was thinking when he looked at him like that. He clearly wanted something but was too tentative to try without permission.

"If you want to touch it, you may as well," Wolfram said. He flipped another page.

He felt the mattress shift again as Yuuri inched closer, coming quite near to his side and reaching a hand out to place it on his stomach. Yuuri had felt the child kick for the first time only a few days before. Since then, his need to touch it seemed to have increased dramatically.

Wolfram allowed it only because he thought it would be unfair of him not to. Once he felt the pressure of Yuuri's palm on him, he released one hand from the book to take Yuuri's and slide it to a more appropriate place to feel movement.

Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Yuuri fight hard to restrain a large smile.

"What if it's a girl?" Yuuri asked.

"You said once your name could also be used for females on Earth," Wolfram observed. "Perhaps we'll name her after you as well."

He was only half joking. The fact that Yuuri's name was used for either gender meant they didn't have to worry about coming up with something else if they didn't want to.

Sometimes Wolfram didn't want to.

"No," Yuuri said, and his voice was more firm this time. "Absolutely not."

"Then what would you suggest?"

"I don't know. What kind of name would you want?"

Wolfram shrugged his shoulders and turned another page, having returned his other hand to the book as soon as he was done guiding Yuuri's over. "Something regal," he said.

"The Emperor of Japan has a daughter named Sayako," Yuuri replied. "She had to give up her title when she married a commoner, though."

"Then our daughter will not be named for her," Wolfram asserted.

"Masako?" Yuuri tried again. "She's the wife of the Crown Prince. Then there's Michiko the Empress. Kiko, Mako, Kako, Aiko…"

Wolfram could not be sure his face didn't screw up at the abundant use of the syllable "ko."

"I kind of like 'Aiko,'" Yuuri said.

"I would prefer something that would be more recognizable to our people," Wolfram decided.

"Because 'Yuuri's' _so_ recognizable," Yuuri responded in the tone of voice that meant he was rolling his eyes.

Wolfram rolled his right back.

"Diana?" Yuuri suggested after a pause.

His hand had taken to lightly caressing Wolfram's stomach, paying particular attention to the spot where a foot would occasionally strike against his insides.

"No," Wolfram said.

"Catherine?"

"Better, but preferably not."

Yuuri laughed but didn't sound particularly amused. "I'm running out of names here," he said. "Let's just name her after your mom."

That was also a tempting notion, though not one he intended to follow through with if only because his mother would never shut up about it if he did.

They sat without talking for a while, Wolfram paging through the book while Yuuri continued to brush his hand along his stomach. It was not the most comfortable interaction, but it was not altogether unnerving either. Their contact was innocent and their conversation was not the most dramatic they'd had. Wolfram did not feel rushed or cornered, nor did he feel the need to put more distance between them. If there was any sense of repugnance beneath the platonic atmosphere, it was at the moment tame and avoidable.

There was guilt there, too—the thought that he was unworthy to be a parent or the husband of a king when he could not even surpass such childish compulsions, and that thought confused him when he set it next to thoughts of Yuuri being human and humans being repulsive.

What did it mean if neither of them were worthy?

Eventually Wolfram decided he would rather not think about it right now. He knew he had to, that this was not a problem that could continuously be pushed aside in the hopes that it would sort itself out, but he was tired and he doubted it was something that could be solved in the course of a single night anyway.

He was alright for now. He was dealing with the process of having a child. He was managing the situation with Yuuri. He was controlling the things he said and did and thought as much as he could. He hadn't had another attack in weeks. He thought it was because he no longer had the extra stress of telling Yuuri about the child and his feelings on the matter weighing on his mind. Now that Yuuri knew, now that it wasn't something he felt he had to constantly hide, the pressure was not quite so excruciating.

He should have told him years ago.

When the pictures in the book progressed from drawings of the child in the womb to drawings of the child coming out of the womb, Wolfram decided he'd had quite enough of books for one night. He snapped it shut and set in on the side table, turning to apprise his husband of his readiness for sleep.

He could not open his mouth because Yuuri was looking at him too seriously. When he had that look on his face, he looked too old and too kingly to be "Yuuri." Wolfram was immediately silenced, apprehensive as he waited for Yuuri to speak his mind.

Yuuri watched him carefully for a few moments more before he seemed to come to a decision. His face returned to its previous softness as he said, "Alexandra."

Wolfram licked his lips and shifted into a more comfortable position. "I beg your pardon?" he asked confusedly.

"Alexandra," Yuuri said again. Then he clarified, "If it's a girl. I like the name Alexandra."

Wolfram mulled the name over in his head but could not find anything immediately wrong with it. "Very well," he agreed, paused, then added, "It's a strong name."

A strong name for a strong child. A healthy child. A child that might use magic. A child that belonged to Yuuri. A child that had been conceived through their devotion to one another. A child who would bring hope and joy to many.

That had to be enough.

It had to be.

Yuuri nodded, caressed Wolfram's belly a final time, then kindly pulled his hand away.

"You should get some sleep," he said.

Wolfram made a noise that sounded like agreement and shuffled down until he was lying on his more comfortable side, with his back to Yuuri as was their habit. Yuuri took the time to adjust the blankets before carefully settling into place as well.

"I hope it's a girl," he mumbled against Wolfram's hair.

Brown eyes flashed in his mind. Brown eyes and brown hair and a lovely smile that used to belong to a lovely little girl.

Wolfram's hand lightly touched his stomach as the child kicked and jabbed and turned and refused to give him peace.

He hoped it was a boy.

* * *

It came to his attention not long after that he was spending far too much time in the royal chambers.

This wasn't always his fault. He certainly didn't enjoy spending a good deal of time in bed—after a while the novelty of it began to wear off, no matter how much he may in fact like to sleep even under non-pregnant conditions—and he'd come to sorely miss all the things he was no longer allowed to do all the more. What he wouldn't give to go on even an uneventful patrol. Even the drastic limitations that had come upon his life before his pregnancy would have been more welcome than this.

On certain days he was much too achy and tired to care. The child seemed to be sucking him dry of all energy and any other feeling that wasn't irritation and resentment. If he hadn't felt much like himself in recent years, he felt even less like himself now.

There were, however, a few days here and there when he found he had at least enough energy to leave the royal chambers and spend a short while outdoors, which he began to do more frequently when encouraged by his mother. Gisela was rather strict when it came to the sort of activities she allowed him to engage in, and his mother and Yuuri tended to heed her every word, but walks in the courtyard or the gardens were permitted as long as he made sure he drank plenty of fluids.

Often he killed two birds with one stone and took his lunches outdoors when he could manage the walk.

"You seem melancholy," his uncle Waltorana observed on one such occasion, sipping at his wine over an empty plate as Wolfram picked at his food.

Wolfram had forgone drinking wine ever since Yuuri had informed him that alcohol had been discovered to cause deformities in children on Earth. He could not be sure that the same applied here, as there had been no studies to survey the effect, but he wasn't willing to risk taking any chances. He supposed wine was only a minor sacrifice compared to losing out on a distinguished career in the military or putting his body under so much strain with the child in the first place.

He was already having a human child. He didn't need it to be a _deformed_ human child on top of that.

Since then, he'd restricted himself to drinking only fruit juices, tea, and the clear spring water Yuuri ordered delivered to the castle for him. His husband had offered many times to bring more of a variety of drinks from Earth, but Wolfram thought he was already taking enough Earthen advice without constantly ingesting products produced _by _humans _for _humans.

"I fear I have no reason to be anything but," Wolfram said. He poked at his lamb and the vegetables that accompanied it with his spork. The heat of approaching summer had a way of dampening his appetite even as his body worked to sustain more than itself.

"I should think you'd be pleased," Waltorana replied.

"Why should you think such a thing?"

"You are providing the King with an heir," Waltorana said. His voice had lowered as if to impress upon Wolfram the importance of this fact.

Wolfram did not require the reminder but knew better than to snap at his uncle. Instead, he mumbled an indifferent sounding, "Assuming the child is male."

They sat at a table arranged in a gazebo in the rose garden, goblets of drinks and plates of food between them, with Wolfram's guards standing watch and preventing any nosy courtiers from disturbing them, Rupert still well within earshot on the chance that his presence would be required. The weather was warm, the sun high and bright and the air thick with the scent of flowers in full-bloom.

It should have been a happy meeting for both of them. He was married to the man he loved, a man who also happened to be the King. He was round with the king's child, a child who would be part Bielefeld and may one day sit on the throne of the Great Demon Kingdom. The Bielefelds were once again one of the most influential aristocratic families within the kingdom, and would likely rise to further power as the child grew and Waltorana continued to throw his support in with Yuuri.

His life could have gone much differently, could have spun awry in so many different ways. He could have been made to marry some minor noble man or woman not of his own choosing—or worse, a foreign royal in a faraway land. He could have been severely injured in combat or barred from active duty for reasons even less inspiring than bearing the King a child. He could have died when his heart was manipulated in order to open one of the Forbidden Boxes, and then Yuuri would have likely married some hussy without a proper pedigree and had a dozen or so brats of poor conduct.

Yet even putting his fate into perspective did not comfort him the way it should have. He acknowledged his good fortune, but he could not quell the dissatisfaction and the want of "more."

Wolfram knew what his uncle would say if he commented on it—"What more is there?"

It was a good question, and one he had no answer to.

"I see no reason why His Majesty would not consider leaving the throne to a daughter," Waltorana said, his eyes closely scrutinizing Wolfram from across the table.

"It's not a question of whether or not he'll consider it," Wolfram replied. "It's a question of whether or not the kingdom will accept another queen. We've had so few, none of whom were particularly effective."

"They were all of the Great One's choosing," Waltorana reminded him.

"And so they were welcomed by the people. I doubt the same could be said for a queen who does not have the Great One's blessing."

His uncle stared at him, bringing his goblet to his mouth for another sip of wine. "You may be right," he acknowledged.

Even if he wasn't, Wolfram wasn't the sort to chance it. Yuuri might have some newfangled idea of a kingdom under the rule of a half-human queen, but all Wolfram had to do was look at the wider world and the imbalance of monarchial power between males and females. He knew of only three to succeed—Greta, the Lady Flynn of Caloria, and Greta's childhood friend, Queen Beatrice of Cavalcade.

They were not favorable odds from any angle.

"You do not wish to have more children," Waltorana said. It was not a question, but then it did not have to be. The answer should be fairly obvious to any who chose to think it.

"I am not enamored of the idea, no," Wolfram admitted. "One is enough. It _was_ enough. I have no need for more, nor do I find any joy being in this condition. I am a soldier, not a vessel for-"

He cut himself off before he could finish the thought, very near to making a disparaging remark against his husband.

The husband he loved, he reminded himself.

"You are a prince," his uncle corrected him. "You were born a prince and you became a soldier, though even a soldier is not exempt from carrying a child. It is an honorable calling should one choose to do so. You will bear more, of course, if you intend to keep a male on the throne."

"If the child is male-"

"A spare would be beneficial," Waltorana finished.

Wolfram frowned but could not argue against the logic.

"Unless you intend to take the throne yourself," his uncle casually continued, looking into his goblet as if the contents intrigued him.

"Of course I don't intend to take the throne," Wolfram scoffed disdainfully. "I only agreed before so that I might protect what Yuuri had endeavored to build."

"_Would_ you have protected it?" Waltorana wondered, swirling his goblet around.

"I see no reason why I shouldn't have," Wolfram said. "An alliance does not require those who participate to _like_ one another. I could have sown the seeds of a political partnership with human kings if it meant that our kingdom would prosper."

"Yet you cannot bear taking a human husband or delivering a human child."

"_Neither of which is my fault_!" Wolfram shouted, rising from the table with a swiftness he did not normally exhibit with the burden of extra weight.

The flash of temper was sudden, an explosion of frustration and anger and a grim bitterness toward the man he blamed for putting him in this position in the first place.

He knew what his mother said, had seen her in a heated, whispered discussion with both of his uncles since she'd learned that his childhood fits had returned, and she wasn't incorrect in her assumptions. He had been infected with these thoughts as a child, with a disgust for any impurity of the blood and a sense of superiority over those of low birth. They had not developed on their own. He had been encouraged to believe, to abuse and hate. He had, and it had torn his mind apart in the process.

He did not like to elude the weight of responsibility, but there were times when he knew others had just as much of a right to bear it.

"You hold me accountable for your failures," Waltorana observed smoothly. He did not seem to feel any sadness or rage, though there was a glimmer of irritation in his eyes, and perhaps if Wolfram had taken the time to consider the issue further and looked deeply enough into the uncle he adored, he may have seen a meager shred of guilt.

But duty came first with Waltorana, as it did with everyone in Wolfram's life, and Waltorana would do as his duty bid him to do.

"No one else would have led me to believe as you did!" Wolfram accused, palms flat on the table to hold himself up as he swayed just slightly, his shrill voice carrying throughout the garden. "You and Stoffel and my father, always filling my head with awful tales of the humans!"

"I told you nothing less than the truth," his uncle said. "The humans were our enemies. They have persecuted us for thousands of years. They have ransacked out villages, taken our land, murdered our people, and many of them would continue to do the same to this day if they did not fear His Majesty."

"It was never because they were our enemies!" Wolfram denied, nearly hysterical as his mind was once again awash with a conflict he knew not how to win. "What other enemies could we possibly have had? You despised them even when they would not attack us!"

The Captain of Wolfram's guard turned and approached the gazebo at the sound of raised voices, but Wolfram paid no heed to his concern.

"And now you expect me to bed the King and have his child without any reservations?" he continued. "You think it easy to look at him and see him for what he is, and not feel as if I'm debasing myself after all of the offensive things you once spoke on the subject?"

"Your husband is the leader of our people," Waltorana said simply.

"Don't pretend as if you don't see him as something else!"

"I see him as the rightful King," his uncle affirmed, voice slow and even to enunciate the claim. "He has immense power. We've all witnessed it. He was chosen by the Great One and set on the throne to lead us into a new age of glory."

"You despise him!" Wolfram cried. He had heard all of this before, of course, but he could not make himself believe that his uncle had truly set aside his differences. "Were he not the King he would be beneath you! You would have cast him off and sent him to his death as you did Conrart and his men!"

"Do not blame me for an order that was given by-"

"You never criticized him for it! You never dissented! You went along with it like all the others!"

"That time has passed now," Waltorana stressed. "I have accepted His Majesty as my-"

"And you think time makes any difference? You think a title has the power to change one's blood?"

"_You will stop this madness_!" Waltorana bellowed quite suddenly, rising from his chair to stand his ground and stare Wolfram into submission.

He shouldn't have been able to. Wolfram knew his place. He was the Prince Consort, inferior only to the King and the Great Sage. He was no longer one of his uncle's subjects. He had only familial obligations to Waltorana and the Bielefelds. He did not have to listen. He did not have to stand there at attention and take orders. He could do as he wished. He could turn and leave and force his uncle to beg for his forgiveness if he so chose.

But Waltorana had a way of making him feel thirty-years-old again. With his father out of his life, it had been Waltorana who had raised him in his place. With his mother burdened with duty, it had been Waltorana who had hired his tutors and called the nurses when he was sick and set him on his knee to tell him stories. Waltorana was the closest thing to a real father he'd ever had, one of the few men he respected for more than his title, more than his talents, and more than the blood that coursed through both of their veins.

When Waltorana spoke, when his voice took on that tone that meant his patience had been tried and he expected change, any argument Wolfram might have had against him seemed futile.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Rupert shift as if to draw closer, but Wolfram knew that he would not interfere.

"You are no longer a child, Wolfram, and yet for four years you have insisted upon carrying on like one," his uncle hissed, disapproval clear in his words, in his eyes, in the severity of his expression, in the tense manner in which he stood. "You will have this child and however many others are necessary to provide the kingdom with a proper heir. You will abstain from any further complaints pertaining to your husband's heritage and you will fulfill your duties and behave in a manner befitting the consort of a king."

Wolfram swallowed and almost flinched, wobbling on weak knees and sore ankles, but he would not falter. He removed his hands from the table, steeled his back and faced his uncle with the proper grace.

"You were not raised to question authority," Waltorana reminded him. "You are the son of a queen. You were raised to respect the institution of the monarchy as well as your place in it, no matter the man or woman, human or demon, the Great One chose to place on the throne."

The hypocrisy of Waltorana's comments did not go unacknowledged by Wolfram, who remembered all too well his uncle's defiance of authority and disrespect for the monarchy in his previous dealings with Yuuri, but his tongue felt thick in his mouth and he could not think of the appropriate words to argue the point.

"You have brought honor to your family. I will not allow you to sully it by catering to a prejudice that has no place in the new era."

Wolfram managed a weak response. "It is not always so easy."

"Such business is never easy, but you would do well not to _act_ upon your thoughts. The kingdom has seen enough peril without suffering from the shortcomings of its new prince."

"These are private matters. No one can possibly-"

"There is no part of your life that has ever been or ever will be private," Waltorana said. "You know well the sort of rumors that can ignite a court. Do you not think the contention within your relationship with the King has been noticed? Do you not think the court has seen you withdraw? There are eyes and ears everywhere, Wolfram, and they bring dangerous whispers."

"But I don't-"

"You are not alone in your musings against humanity. There are still many within the kingdom who discredit the King and speak slander on account of his human blood. Do you not think they could raise a force enough to tear the kingdom apart? Do you not see how your behavior could be seen by them as an encouraging sign? Would you have the kingdom falter for such a trivial matter as blood?"

"No, I-"

"Then you will stop this madness," Waltorana demanded, less harsh but just as adamant.

Wolfram wanted to find some means to argue, wanted to force his uncle to understand, to see things from his side, but he could think of nothing and so he said nothing. He stood where he was and he inhaled a deep breath, held it in his lungs until they burned from the strain, and shut his eyes as he released it all—the hot air and the dispute and the uncomfortable feelings that sent little tremors up his spine and made his throat close in on itself.

His heart was pounding. His head throbbed with his frustrations—at himself and his uncle and everything that had ever gone wrong in his life. His body quivered with a soreness that would not go away, and the child awoke to jerk around and kick at his insides as if to punish him for his immorality.

He did not like this any more than Yuuri did. He did not approve of it any more than Waltorana, but he couldn't change any of it simply because his uncle snapped his fingers and said it must be so.

Waltorana was correct, of course, that he could pretend. Perhaps he was not at fault for thinking as he did so long as he did what he could to adjust it and make amends, but if his dilemma was viewed by the public and used as a rallying point for those who plotted ill, he would have no one to blame but himself. The encouragement was unintentional, but it mattered not. He knew who he was. He knew what people thought of him. He knew how he was seen. He knew the expectations they set upon him, and which would be disastrous to fulfill.

He was not a child, and he could no longer use the excuse that something wasn't "easy" whenever he failed to succeed. He knew that he must stand tall, he must be strong, and he must face up to it as one would expect from a man of his background—a man of his future.

Wolfram nodded in understanding and slowly lowered himself back into his chair. His hands shook at his sides, but he was quick to hide them in his lap beneath the table.

Waltorana watched him critically. His expression retained its austerity until he'd stared for some time and seemed pleased by what he saw. Then he returned to his seat as well, took his goblet of wine, and downed the remainder of his drink.

Rupert lingered, quietly concerned, but nothing else was said.

* * *

Try as some of the more merciless courtiers might to prove otherwise, Wolfram von Bielefeld was not a weak man. He did not cower or accept defeat. He did not tremble in the face of his own death. He did not go through life intending to be anything but strong and capable and, perhaps when he was a little older, irrevocably wise.

As such, Wolfram von Bielefeld did not cry.

He did not have many clear memories of his early childhood, but he knew the last time he had cried had been after he'd taken a fall from a tree he'd been naughty enough to climb against all warning when he was thirty-eight. He had been fortunate to come away from the adventure with little more than a few scrapes and a sprained wrist. While the pain had been eased by a cool salve and a healer's magic, the fright of it had left him in tears until Gwendal had taken him aside and gently insisted that a prince of his prestige could not afford to succumb to tears over the cruelty of a harmless tree, when there were far worse things to plague the world.

The baby he used to be had dragged an arm over his face to soak up his tears, and marched headfirst through the rest of his childhood with a promise that he would never be caught crying again.

Oh, he knew there'd been that once with Yuuri, in the finale of the boxes and Yuuri's departure for what all of them had thought would be the last time. And maybe there had been a few tears of joy in his eyes when Yuuri had inevitably returned, all wide eyes and dopey grins and nervous laughter Wolfram had not wanted to admit he'd missed far more than he'd ever missed his father, but that had been a special circumstance—traumatic in a way a fall from a tree could never be—and it had happened so quickly that the memory sat in bits and pieces beneath a hazy film he'd never cared to remove.

He did not like to cry. He was not the sort to think it made a person weak to shed tears the way his uncle might, the way he knew many men did, but it still made one open and vulnerable, and he did not like that feeling at all. He left the crying to Yuuri and managed his sadness in other ways—mainly through anger, which had always been one of the easiest emotions for him to express.

Once again, his pregnant body seemed to have other ideas.

As with many of the other changes that had occurred since the child had lodged itself in his belly, Wolfram blamed those invisible little things the Earthlings called "hormones" for the fact that he could not always express his feelings the way he wanted to.

Yuuri had warned him that it might happen of course, read it from one of his little books and promised him it was okay to feel overwhelmed. Wolfram had chosen not to believe him. He had no desire to allow anything—not the spirit of the Great One, or that charlatan Saralegui, or strange, invisible human concepts from Earth—to control his body in his place.

Apparently these "hormones" were a lot stronger than he thought.

It happened one night for no apparent reason, as he lied in bed with nothing to do but sleep or wait for Yuuri to return from his office. One second he was content to stare at the wall and count imaginary sheep that looked like T-Zou, and the next he was turning his face into the pillow and weeping as he hadn't wept since that day when he'd been thirty-eight.

He did not sob or scream. No, it was much more elegant than that—silent tears that streaked his face and made his eyes puff up, while the child wriggled around in his belly to remind him that it was there.

As if he needed the reminder.

He was so quiet that when Yuuri finally came back his husband didn't even notice. Yuuri went to the washroom to relieve himself and then turned to the wardrobe to change for bed as he always did, with quick glances in his direction to check that Wolfram was resting.

Wolfram was more than happy to allow him to believe that he was asleep. He had every intention of keeping his tears to himself and pretending as if such a thing had never even happened, but though his mind encouraged him to "resist, resist, resist, you've handled more than this, you need no comfort from him," as soon as Yuuri climbed onto the bed and sidled up behind him, Wolfram twisted and lumbered around to turn his inconvenient body and press his face into Yuuri's shoulder.

In his defense, it was much sturdier and less suffocating than the pillow.

Yuuri froze at the first sign of movement, stared when he saw Wolfram's face, and seemed rather tense as Wolfram carried on into his nightshirt, but once he got his bearings Wolfram felt Yuuri's arm lift to hold him around his chest.

"Are you okay?" Yuuri asked.

Wolfram pressed his lips tight together to make sure he wasn't about to make any inelegant sounds before he mumbled back wetly, "I don't know."

Yuuri's hand rubbed up his arm, slipped through his hair and cupped his head.

"What's wrong?" he asked next.

Wolfram shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut. "I don't know," he said again.

"Oh…" Yuuri replied. For a moment he didn't seem to know what to say. He kept his hand in place and pressed a kiss to Wolfram's hair, and when a minute or so had passed without either of them making a sound he said, "Well, that's okay…"

It was such an absurd thing to say because nothing was okay at all, but it was also very like Yuuri to just accept his tears as they were, without comment, without bias, and with a tenderness Wolfram had never known.

He loved that about Yuuri, even though he thought it made him a horrible wimp. It was one of those little things he could have easily taken for granted, but which he'd come to appreciate much more than he did the big things. He could have loved Yuuri if he wasn't a king, if he wasn't so powerful, if he wasn't even as handsome, as long as the kindness was there, as long as his heart was still golden and his soul pure white.

Then he had a reason to cry—for the way Yuuri spoke with so much understanding and affection; for the way Yuuri always looked into his face, into his eyes, touched his arm or his hair before he paid any attention to his stomach; for the way Yuuri treated him with gentleness and care without questioning his strength, without making him feel uncomfortably exposed.

What had he ever done to earn that sort of consideration?

What had he ever said to deserve that sort of love?

He didn't have any need to hear it anymore, though Yuuri had never even said it once. He didn't even have to look deep into Yuuri's eyes to try and find it. He could feel it there, a shimmering light to break through the dark and the gloom and the wasteland of horror and scorn that threatened to eat him alive.

"I'm sorry," he said when he felt that he could speak, after the tears had slowed and the deluge of emotion had softened.

Yuuri kept his hand in his hair and asked "For what?" as if Wolfram had never done anything wrong.

Wolfram laughed at how foolish that was, and breathed in the smell of earth and sweat and an old, dusty office. "For how I treated you were you were younger," he said.

"What do you mean?" Yuuri wondered, running his fingers through Wolfram's hair, gently pressing the tips against his scalp.

He felt the tingle of magic at the crown of his head. For as long as it last, his mind was as still and calm as a pond undisturbed by wind or rain or creature of nature, and every thought and fear was suddenly carried away to some far off place where it might never trouble him again.

"When we were engaged," Wolfram explained. His lashes felt wet on his cheeks, but as they lied there facing one another side-by-side, he felt no more need to cry.

"What about it?" Yuuri asked.

"I didn't listen when you said you didn't want me because I'm a man."

"Oh…" Yuuri said with undisguised confusion. "I mean, it's okay. Obviously it doesn't matter now."

"It isn't okay," Wolfram insisted, "because you've never forced anything on me."

It made all the difference in the world. If Yuuri had been a more overbearing man, arrogant and boorish and indifferent to Wolfram's plight, careless of his feelings, unconcerned about his comfort, Wolfram would have made no effort to overcome their differences. He would have been satisfied to hate and curse his husband and denounce his human blood in peace.

He didn't know how Yuuri had come to return his feelings when Wolfram didn't think he'd done anything to earn them then way Yuuri had. He supposed it was simply who Yuuri was.

Wolfram knew the exact moment when Yuuri understood what he meant. His husband's body tensed and there was a brief lapse in magic, but he relaxed quickly and released a sigh that was half a laugh.

"This isn't like that, Wolf," he said.

"Of course it is."

"No," Yuuri replied. "The only thing that's the same between then and now is that you loved me through it."

Wolfram opened his eyes again and tipped his head back to catch Yuuri's gaze. "Are you in my place now?" he asked.

Yuuri smiled, leaned in, and kissed the tip of his nose like the ridiculous wimp he was. "Yeah," he said. "I'm in your place now."

"Is it strong enough, do you think?" Wolfram wondered.

"What?" Yuuri asked, but he seemed to guess on his own, "Love?"

Wolfram nodded. "Is it strong enough to withstand anything… like people say…?"

He didn't get an immediate response. Yuuri took his time to think it over. Wolfram could see the way his eyes shifted as he battled out the answer. They hardened when Yuuri came to his conclusion.

"I think so," he said, "so long as we're willing to try."

Once, Wolfram might have scoffed at the thought. Love was such an arbitrary concept; it came and it went with no explanation. How could something so uncertain and insubstantial have any sort of power over anything? It could not stop death. It could not stop wars. It could not cure disease or prevent famine. Love was at once limited and limitless, capable of soothing the soul or bringing it pain. It was a risk and a reward. It was fickle.

He did not love the child the way he thought he should, could not think of it as "mine" the way he thought of it as Yuuri's, though he knew just as much of himself—if not more—had gone into its creation. He did not love his life, found no enjoyment in being Prince Consort except that he could be by Yuuri's side for as long as life and death would allow. He didn't even love himself very much, no longer felt as if he were worthy of praise when he could only complain about life's hardships instead of embracing its joys.

But he did love Yuuri, so deeply and so completely he thought he could believe it when Yuuri said love was strong enough.

Only Yuuri could say something like that and make it true.

As a child, Wolfram had always wanted to be like his brothers. He had looked up to them from the moment he could understand the world, the difference between right and wrong, and all the things that didn't fit so cleanly into either. They had been his ideal, everything he could and would ever aspire to be.

He'd wanted to be as tall and dignified as Gwendal, who could silence a room with his stern glare and booming voice, but who knew gentleness and compassion for the young and unfortunate. He'd wanted to be as strong and talented as Conrart, who'd surpassed every disadvantage his human blood brought him in a land where even a drop of it was viewed with malice, and honed his skills with an envious dedication to become the greatest swordsman the kingdom had ever known.

His uncles, too, had often been worthy of his youthful admiration—Waltorana for his cunning and firm resolve, and Stoffel for his ambition, persistence, and his strong grip on power. Only his mother had gone without merit; all she'd wanted and lived for was love. He cherished her as most children cherish their mothers, but to him she had been foolish to put all her hopes and dreams into something that always seemed to slip through her fingers, no matter how many times she tried to keep it close.

Now he knew that he would likely never be like his brothers, or his uncles, or even his mother, who was willing to give up on love if freedom meant the happiness of another.

He could be all of that or none of it, and it wouldn't make a difference.

But if he wanted—if he was brave enough to try, to face his struggles and learn from them, to put his faith in love and fate and dark, smiling eyes—maybe he could be something better.

Maybe he could be something more.

* * *

Wolfram hated it when his uncle was right just as much as he hated it when he was wrong. If Waltorana was right then it meant that Wolfram had to admit that _he_ wasn't, and if Waltorana was wrong it was likely a sign that the world was coming to an end.

June came with the thick scent of roses and one of the two days of the year Wolfram hated more than any other.

The first was Yuuri's birthday, which was still more than a month out of reach but which he'd come to hate for the reminder it provided that his husband was growing older, sure to be edging closer to that time when he would be wrinkled and gray and finally deposited into a coffin and buried beneath an effigy that could never hope to do him justice. Wolfram always put on a brave face every twenty-ninth of July, but the truth was he'd rather be pregnant twice over than watch the kingdom celebrate an occasion he did not think worth celebrating.

The second day worth his abhorrence was at the start of June—the sixth to be exact—and another birthday, though not of anyone he would ever consider family.

His Eminence the Great Sage's thirtieth year was rejoiced with far too much fanfare and not enough wine on Wolfram's part, and he began to wish Yuuri had just left him to blissful ignorance like the rest of the population rather than sharing all his Earthen advances. Secretive and aloof as he might have been at times, the Great Sage was also a notorious flirt and had the habit of garnering quite a bit of attention for himself. It seemed he used his birthday as the one day a year in which he let loose and ran wild, eating and drinking in excess, cavorting with all sorts of displeasing individuals, and steadily working his way through the brothels of the capital city (or so the rumors said).

Wolfram didn't quite know what he should believe when the information came from those who had not proven themselves trustworthy, but he certainly knew what he saw, and he saw far too much inappropriate behavior for his liking—a sudden lack of decorum that spread throughout the castle to infect even the most virtuous of courtiers.

The only people Wolfram had ever known to be immune to it were Gwendal, Conrart, Waltorana, Rupert and, of course, himself. The rest acted with a looseness they never would have engaged in had the Great Sage been the more gentlemanly sort. He had a terrible effect on people. Worst of all was that he had a talent for making Yuuri act like a complete ignoramus.

Wolfram would have none of it this year. The moment His Eminence began to ply Yuuri with a bit too much wine while goading him on about his swiftly disappearing youth, Wolfram hoisted himself from his chair with surprising grace and said, "_Yuuri_," in the tone of voice that meant he expected him to listen, "dance with me before my ankles swell up to the size of dragon eggs."

Someone laughed and shouted something lewd they never would have dared to voice if they weren't too drunk to think.

Wolfram ignored them and waited for Yuuri to scramble to his feet. His husband made the effort to appear dashing by bowing low and offering him his hand, but the wide grin on his face and his careless state of dress completely ruined it.

Or perhaps it made it better. Wolfram could never decide which was more true.

The party was being held outdoors by the gardens—his mother's idea, as she insisted her flowers made such lovely natural decorations. Tables were scattered about in much the same fashion as they were positioned in the Great Hall, with he, Yuuri, the Sage, his mother, and other members of the royal family seated at a long table set to face the rest of the adoring or not-so-adoring crowd. There was enough space between the rest of the tables to dance, and room reserved for a gaggle of musicians to fill the perfumed air with song.

"I know you're not always happy," Yuuri began after making a few vague motions that seemed to alert the musicians to play something slow for the sake of Wolfram's sore feet, "but you could try to enjoy yourself while we have the time."

"Why should we not have the time to enjoy ourselves after the child is born?" Wolfram asked as he took hold of one of Yuuri's palms and placed his free hand on his husband's shoulder.

"You know it'll be different," Yuuri said.

"Surely our lives won't change so drastically that we'll no longer have time for one another."

Yuuri smiled through a roll of his eyes. "Okay, fine, then enjoy yourself for the sake of enjoying yourself."

"I would enjoy myself far better if His Eminence did not encourage so much drunken revelry," Wolfram replied. He did not attempt to conceal a haughty sneer.

"I don't think there's anything wrong with it," Yuuri lightly argued. "It's only one day and it doesn't do any harm."

"Yet I can imagine what this one evening must do for the number of bastard children swarming through the court."

Yuuri chuckled with faint amusement. "Why do they have to be bastards?" he asked.

"Because the amount of sin and lust in the air is stifling."

He regretted it the moment he said it, not because Yuuri laughed to hear him say such a thing but because those confounding "hormones" decided it was a wonderful time to start acting up. The wanton atmosphere was perfect for them, but not so great for Wolfram. He pulled his gaze away from Yuuri's eyes before his husband could notice any change in his expression. Lowering his head only put Yuuri's shoulders in full view, and though he told himself he should be very displeased that Yuuri was not wearing his jacket and had rolled his shirtsleeves to his elbows, he could not help but catch glimpses of one of those toned forearms out of the corner of his eye.

"I don't think you or I have a lot of experience with lust," Yuuri said, his mouth curving into a lopsided grin that meant he was lost to the fact that Wolfram was under the influence of a foreign enemy.

And he was definitely beginning to think these "hormones" were a very grave enemy.

"Except with each other, I mean."

"Is this where you finally admit you've never taken another to your bed?" Wolfram wondered, and tried to sound disinterested while mentally reminding himself that he was not _ready_ to be interested again.

"I'm pretty sure you would have known if I brought someone else to bed," Yuuri joked. He laughed at his own attempt at humor.

"It was a figure of speech," Wolfram felt the need to inform him.

He decided looking over Yuuri's shoulder instead might be a better option, but when he tried that he took notice of His Eminence pouring his mother another drink.

Wolfram almost stopped dancing right then and there to put a stop to it, because even His Eminence doing something so innocent as sharing a drink with his mother was crossing one of Wolfram's admittedly thin lines dictating proper behavior, but he was pulled to a halt by Yuuri's comment of "You could just say 'sex' instead of bothering with all the figures of speech."

It wouldn't have been such a horrible comment if Wolfram's mind wasn't currently under a lustful siege. As it was, hearing the word "sex" in Yuuri's voice sent his thoughts reeling in a direction he could not bring himself to follow quite yet, with the result that he stumbled and nearly tripped over his own two feet.

It didn't help that his equilibrium was already thrown off because of his rounding middle.

"Sorry, sorry," Yuuri said, though it was clear he didn't know what he was even apologizing for. His arm tightened around Wolfram's waist in an attempt to keep him upright, and he pulled him just an inch or so closer for the extra support. "Are your ankles bothering you? You can sit back down if you want."

"No, you would do well to keep me away from the table," Wolfram admitted. "If I returned now I would be forced to throttle His Eminence."

Yuuri glanced quickly over his shoulder and laughed at what he must have seen as a completely innocent picture.

"Okay, fine," he relented, "but tell me when you need to rest."

Wolfram responded with a shallow nod and focused his eyes on Yuuri's shoulder again. He told himself it was a shoulder like any other shoulder, but the "hormones" told him differently and insisted that it was quite a cozy shoulder, good for resting against and gripping onto. With nothing better to do to satisfy the bloody things, Wolfram pressed closer and set his head right on it, turning his face to stare at the side of Yuuri's neck.

"Feeling snuggly today?" Yuuri asked. He didn't sound disappointed at all. On the contrary, he seemed rather surprised by it.

Wolfram supposed he had every right to.

"No," he denied, mostly for the sake of denying it, "I'm only tired."

"You can go back inside," Yuuri offered. "It's a little hot out. You don't want to get overheated. Gisela will flip out if you do. Are you sure you've had enough to drink?"

"Yes, I'm fine," Wolfram said.

"But you just said you were tired."

"And now I'm resting," Wolfram announced.

Yuuri seemed to decide that that was good enough, because he stopped arguing before he even truly began and started to quietly hum along to the music instead.

It wasn't easy to follow the correct steps of the dance while Wolfram had his head lowered and the space between them had shrunk. After a few failed attempts to continue they both gave up and settled for swaying together instead. It was actually quite nice—would have been relaxing if there weren't over a hundred people around to watch.

The arm Yuuri had around his waist shifted so that his hand could rub at the small of Wolfram's back. Wolfram was ashamed to admit he might have made a little sound of delight, but he reassured himself with the knowledge that it was so quiet only Yuuri would have been able to hear it. His back did have the habit of distressing him with all those aches and pains, and Yuuri was rather good at easing them away when the actually took the time to try.

Wolfram felt very warm and very loved. If he were in a better state he might have been able to imagine continuing this in the privacy of their bedroom. He wasn't surprised by Yuuri's willingness to wait, but it had been nearly two months since the last time they'd managed anything more than a kiss and he wouldn't have blamed Yuuri for growing impatient. There were times when Wolfram was impatient with himself, when the part of him that wanted whispered that he was wasting valuable time to the part of him that cringed away.

He was almost happy that his belly got on the way and kept some space between them when Yuuri lowered his head to press soft kisses against his neck. For once the child proved useful, as he had no doubt that the urge to cave would have been much stronger had they been pressed any closer together. Only the risk of interruption from an unforeseen panic and the stress it would lead to for the both of them and Gisela stopped him from caving anyway.

Fate, however, had other ways of interrupting.

"Your Majesty…"

It was Gwendal's voice, as low as Wolfram might expect during an evening his older brother did not approve of any more than he did, but with a surprising edge to it that had Wolfram lifting his head back up.

Gwendal stood very near to them, having weaved his way through the other dancing couples. His expression was too somber for the lively atmosphere. Few others might have been able to tell the difference between this and Gwendal's normal expression, but Wolfram knew his brother's face too well to make the mistake. Gwendal's eyes were just a little too narrow, a little too sharp in focus to be so commonplace. He only ever looked like that when there was something wrong.

His and Yuuri's swaying came to an immediate stop.

"What is it?" Yuuri asked. He did not sound alarmed yet, but there was a wariness in his posture, coiled energy ready to snap, that let Wolfram know he'd noticed it too.

"I must speak with you," Gwendal simply said.

He spared a look for Wolfram but didn't seem willing to hold the discussion in front of him. Wolfram couldn't tell if it was because the matter was meant for the King's ears only or if it was something Gwendal thought might upset him enough to induce a bad reaction.

Dutifully, if reluctantly, Wolfram detached himself from Yuuri and took a step back. "I'll return to the table," he said.

Yuuri met his eyes. "Are you sure? Do you need help getting back?"

Wolfram forced a snort and a roll of his eyes. "I am not so large that it is impossible to walk on my own," he answered.

"Right," Yuuri agreed, his mouth twitching like he wanted to smile but didn't think it was the proper situation for one. "I'll be back in a bit."

Wolfram watched as his husband moved off with Gwendal. Conrart joined them almost immediately, appearing through the crowd with the ease of a man who was used to blending in and being overlooked. The three of them walked very close together, as if conversing in whispers until they could wade through the throngs of courtiers and find a more appropriate venue.

He caught sight of Rupert—as serious looking as always—as he turned toward the table. As of late, his guard had taken to hovering around him much like Conrart hovered around Yuuri. With no more than a glance and a jerk of the head, Wolfram managed to call him over.

"Has something happened?" Wolfram asked lowly, not wishing to be overheard.

Rupert replied in the same hushed tone. "Nothing that should concern you as of yet, Your Majesty."

"But something _has_ happened then, hasn't it?"

"I'm afraid I don't have much information for you."

"And you wouldn't make it easy for me even if you did," Wolfram observed, eyeing his guard dourly. "Is it Massenia?"

"No, Your Majesty, I don't believe so."

"One of the other human countries?"

Rupert evaded the question, but Wolfram couldn't tell if it was because he didn't want to say anything or because he truthfully didn't know. It was often difficult to tell the difference with Rupert when he got that stubbornly blank look on his face.

"I'm sure His Majesty will inform you when he feels the time is right."

"You know as well as I do how long that could b-"

He was bumped into from behind by one of the dancing couples, a harmless nudge that would have done nothing but force him to take a step in order to correct his balance had his previously lighter frame been intact, but with his weight a little more unevenly distributed he stumbled forward and felt a streak of fear as he nearly fell belly-first onto the ground.

Rupert prevented that ugly and potentially disastrous debacle with a swift arm around his middle, holding Wolfram upright long enough for him to get his bearings before carefully guiding him into a more stable position.

"Prince Wolfram!" an exaggerated gasp sounded at his back.

A shiver coursed up his spine and left him momentarily frozen. Any sense of warmth or comfort he might have felt mere minutes ago fled to escape the sudden sense of cold and apprehension that replaced it. He sucked in a breath as his mind circled back to the state it had held in youth.

The pivot he took on his heel felt painfully slow, but it must not have been because Rupert was no longer in his direct line of sight and he was staring at the woman who had so gracelessly careened into him.

There had been many parts of the Great Demon Kingdom that had been prone to anti-human sentiments in the past. He supposed it went without saying that Bielefeld was one of the more notorious, considering the former opinions of his family and their tight control over the land within their boundaries. There had been large pockets in Spitzweg as well, nearly as many in Voltaire, a notable amount in Grantz, Rochfort, Radford, and Gyllenhaal, but much less in Christ, Karbelnikoff, and Wincott. Yet to presume that the racial prejudices had been restricted to only certain areas of the kingdom would have been baseless, naïve, and false.

He had, however, been raised around the children of noble and aristocratic families who practiced the same politics as his own. They shared some of the same lessons, played many of the same games, and even, in the case of a few, shared some of the same nursemaids while their parents saw to business at court. Wolfram knew a large number of the courtiers of his age who were in residence by that very circumstance. Names, faces, family histories, notable political and military accomplishments, personal tragedies, nothing was left out of gossip and court intrigue.

At Spitzweg Castle, Wolfram had drawn closest to Elizabeth, his frequent playmate and one of the very, very few people he would elect to call a friend. At Bielefeld Castle, Waltorana had been of a stricter nature, and Wolfram was encouraged to grow and play among the boys who would one day become his personal guards. He'd made do on his own at Voltaire Castle, where Gwendal did not often like to hold court, but Blood Pledge had been swarming with people of all political affiliations. Many of them had built up their toxic opinions together.

"Lady Scarlett," Rupert's pensive voice provided the name for the face that met him now.

She was a lovely woman—but then many of the women at court, and at His Eminence's party especially, were lovely. Older than Wolfram was by a number of years he couldn't seem to remember—but by the looks of her it couldn't have been more than fifteen or twenty—she radiated a distinctly disdainful manner, from the imperious smirk and the careless lift of her arching brows, to the austere set of her shoulders and the arrogant jut of her chin. Dark auburn her rippled down her back, and a pair of gray eyes appraised him—a little too casual, a little too daring.

The sight of her was like ice to a soul Yuuri's presence had warmed like the sun. Wolfram did not need to remember her clearly to know exactly what was on her mind. She looked between him and Rupert contemptuously.

"Why, Sir Bleddyn," she began with that same tone of exaggerated surprise that had joined her gasp, her countenance just shy of menacing, "how delightful to see you. It seems the years have treated you well. Captain of the Prince's Guard. What an illustrious position. I'm certain your father must be so proud."

"I fear I have heard little of you," Rupert replied. It was not clear if he meant is as an insult or as a general observation.

"No, you wouldn't have, of course. I've had so little desire to be at court since the war."

It was a heavy comment, laced with too many others that went unsaid, but Wolfram could hear rancor in her voice and flinched unintentionally.

It did not go unnoticed.

"And here we have the Prince himself," the Lady Scarlett continued, switching her cold gaze from Rupert to Wolfram. "I must say I was shocked to hear you'd married the King. I never would have imagined you to be the type to marry a _human_-"

She said the word as if it here an insult. To her, it probably was. It had been once, to him.

"-regardless of his title," she finished after a pause, once she'd let the word sink it.

Wolfram found that his throat had suddenly grown tight and choked off any of his efforts to speak. His heart had already picked up in rhythm, his blood a maddening rush in his ears. He felt dizzy, almost faint.

Scarlett looked at him as if she saw something unpleasant. "Then again, you were always so bold I never would have imagined you to be the type to so willingly submit to another man, but clearly you take no issue with that," she said, sparing his ballooning stomach a derisive glance.

"Lady Scarlett," Rupert said in warning.

She ignored him. "How does it feel, carrying that human spawn within you, knowing what it will one day grow to become?"

"Lady Scarlett," Rupert tried again.

"How can you live with yourself, having defiled your pure blood with filthy human seed?"

There was his wedding night coming into sharp focus again, so present and so real but so far away, and there was the dread, too. He could feel it coming, rising higher and higher to cloud his mind and set his heart racing. All he could do was stand and contain it, push it back as far as it would go and hope it was enough.

"Lady Scarlett," Rupert said more firmly, refusing to be ignored this time. "Have care how you speak to His Majesty."

"Oh, I'm terribly sorry," she rushed to feign an apology, "but it's been so long and I seem to have missed so much. Tell me, Prince Wolfram. I'm so very curious. Does it please you to bed with humans?"

"You are too bold, Lady-"

"Are you so consumed by your sinful lust that you're willing to besmirch you ancestry and taint the blood of the Great One with such a heinous violation?"

She reached out with one of her hands, thin and elegant and sparkling with rings of emerald and pearl, and made as if to touch Wolfram's stomach.

Rupert's hand shot out and grabbed her wrist before her fingers could so much as graze his clothing, stepping forward to push her back and twist her arm up and away.

"You will remove yourself from the premises or I will be forced to bring you before the King for your impudent conduct," he said.

Scarlett's smile was poisonous. "Why, Sir Bleddyn, is this any way to treat a lady?"

"You have insulted His Majesty with vile accusations," Rupert responded. "An offense to the Prince Consort is an offense to the King."

"Oh, I don't believe I've offended him. On the contrary, I'm certain he agrees with me."

"You go too far…"

Wolfram knew what he should have done. He should have silenced her the minute she opened her mouth, and then if she refused and insisted upon spitting her insults into his face he should have slapped the fight right out of her. He was not opposed to slapping a lady if she refused to conduct herself with the proper respect, especially one who didn't even take the trouble to veil her aspersions against himself or his husband. He should have cursed her and demanded she remove herself from his sight.

He should have been able to defend himself. What was she but one overzealous woman? She was not armed, they were in the middle of a crowd, and there were guards scattered about all over the place. She could do nothing but hiss her acerbic words and feign a familiarity and a friendship Wolfram could not remember ever having been especially close—nothing like Elizabeth; not even anything like Rupert, and that relationship had been distanced by propriety since they were children. Wolfram should have easily had the upper hand. He was taller, stronger, had influence and power that had nothing to do with magic, and an animosity for anyone who questioned his relationship with his husband, whether or not there were parts of him that agreed with her comments.

But panic like this had a way of overpowering his senses. He could remember waking as a child, from nightmares of blood and carnage and the foulness of death at the hands of faceless humans, gasping and shaking from a fear so pervasive it took over every thought and turned it into something monstrous. He was filled with no more than the thought that something terrible might happen—to himself, to his friends, to his family, the people who meant the most to him—and it would all be because of those filthy humans and their vicious cruelty toward their people.

It felt like that now, only so much worse—with one voice screaming "filth" and "human," and another telling him "no… no, it isn't like that… it isn't like that at all." His head was throbbing and his vision swimming, too fuzzy around the edges as his lungs fought for air, and the child was kicking inside of him again, thrashing about as if caught in a terror all its own. He could barely feel his heart anymore it was beating so fast.

"Is there a problem here…?" another voice appeared from behind. Wolfram hadn't heard or sensed anyone else approaching, but he knew the voice belonged to the Great Sage.

An arm slipped around his shoulders, but it wasn't the Sage's arm. He'd have been mortified if it was. Out of the corner of his blurry eyes Wolfram could see blonde hair and black clothing, and he unconsciously drifted closer, shifting to rest heavily against his mother.

"Your Eminence…" Rupert's voice said.

He couldn't see anymore, didn't want to see, but he could hear everything.

"Your Eminence…" Scarlett's silky voice greeted. "Such a lovely party. I do hope you've enjoyed yourself. I dare say you won't be having many more of them."

"You dare make threats against the Great Sage?" Rupert barked.

"You think so poorly of me, Sir Bleddyn. I only meant his human blood will take him away from us all much too soon. Such a shame, really. It has been so many years since the Great Sage has graced our kingdom with his presence."

Beneath the forced politeness she sounded spiteful, suspicious.

"You flatter me," His Eminence responded smoothly, "though I must request that you desist. Your presence here seems to be distressing His Majesty. The King will not take this slight lightly."

"I meant no slight, Your Eminence," Scarlett replied. "I only meant to express my surprise for the Prince's recent fortune."

"Lady Scarlett confronted His Majesty with offensive language," Rupert reported.

Scarlett laughed airily. "It was but talk between old friends!" she said.

There was a period of silence. Wolfram wondered if his ability to hear might have cut out along with his ability to see clearly, but he could still make out the muttering and whispers of other guests beneath his loud, uneven breathing. They'd all faded into the background, there but not there, gathering around to witness but not to intervene.

Finally, His Eminence said, "I request that you return to your place of residence."

"Very well, Your Eminence," Scarlett agreed. "Do enjoy the rest of your evening. And you, Your Majesty… my best wishes. I regret we could not have spoken longer."

Wolfram did not answer—_could _not answer, might not have even if he'd been able to. He heard footsteps and assumed Scarlett had made her exit, and listened to the murmuring of the crowd grow in volume. His mother whispered something in his ear that made no sense, because she was telling him to breathe but it should be obvious to her and to everyone that he could not.

Everything else was distorted. Only pieces of it broke through the blur.

"Take him inside," he heard His Eminence instruct, and he sounded nothing like the boisterous man he'd been for most of the evening, but old and stern and wise like the portrait beside the Great One.

Then Wolfram felt himself being moved and knew the demand must have been meant for him. His mother's arm remained around his shoulders, guiding him unsteadily through the parting crowd. Wolfram was surprised he could even still walk on legs that felt so weak, the terror still so strong, the images still so vivid in his mind.

He saw a blur of color he recognized as Rupert coming around, his normally solemn face frantic with worry, and the last thing Wolfram remembered was Rupert's hand against his chest and the soft green glow of healing, before he senses failed completely and he knew nothing but darkness.

**TBC…**


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Kyou Kara Maou or any of its characters.

**Beta-ed by:** G. Much of the plot was also devised in conjunction with her. I owe her my deepest and heartfelt thanks for all her years of service and friendship.

**Warnings:** Mpreg (and resulting pregnancy issues), angst, depression, language, adult themes, dark themes, religious themes, racial issues (demon and human), violence, blood, torture, sexual content, sexual content of dubious consent, non-consensual sex, original characters (because using the same old villains gets boring), character death (most likely minor, but I have considered offing a major character or two that is not Yuuri or Wolfram). Various other warnings may apply at a later date. I will do my best to update the list as need be. It is very likely that this fic will be quite dark in nature. I apologize if that is not to your liking.

**Pairings(s):** Yuuri/Wolfram

**Setting:** Fourteen years post-season three. Yuuri turns 30 in this chapter and Wolfram is 97 (19).

**Rating:** M

* * *

_**Eternal Light**_

by Mikage

**Chapter Four**

In fourteen years, Yuuri had faced countless dire situations with the sort of energy and enthusiasm only a baseball-loving fifteen-year-old of the modern age with general RPG experience could hope to show while constantly being dragged back and forth between the world he knew and the fantasy world he never even imagined existed. It was a stressful existence, balancing schoolwork and baseball and kingship without really knowing when he'd be transported to and from or how long he'd be away, because even though time on Earth had stood still while he'd been in the other world, being suddenly thrust back had still been something of an adjustment. Remembering time and place and circumstance when he'd just learned magic or become king or found a sentient sword or birthed bearbees or seen dragons or conquered armies took a bit of effort, and settling back into the life of a normal boy after had required a period of reflection to separate one life from the other.

Sometimes it was easy to forget how life used to be when the only thing attaching him to Earth now was his family. Once upon a time his home in Japan had been of more comfort to him than the Great Demon Kingdom and Blood Pledge Castle. In the face of the unknown he'd come to appreciate what was safe and familiar much more than he would have if his experiences had never been more than that of a normal boy. His parents' house, school, the baseball field, they'd all been a refuge for him in times of strife, at least until a puddle opened up beneath his feet or the bath water pulled him through a vortex into the other side of reality.

And this _was_ reality. In the early days it had still been possible to pretend that it was a dream or a hallucination or a cosmic prank being played on him for the amusement of a higher being, even with the proof of it resting against his chest in the necklace Conrad had entrusted him with. Later it became as real to him as anything on Earth. There were people he cared about, there were things he wanted to accomplish, until suddenly it had become his life, it had become his comfort, it had become his passion. The fantasy effect wore off and it became normal. It became familiar.

It became home.

Fourteen years later his parents were still his parents, and Shori was still his brother, and baseball was still one of the best things in the world, but he didn't belong in that house in Japan or anywhere else on Earth. He belonged on a throne, or on a horse, or in the streets of the capital or in a stuffy office piled high with paperwork. He belonged in a place where his decisions affected the lives of millions, where he could bring goodness to people who had never known its grace, where he could protect the innocent and right the wrongs of a four-thousand year history, where he could take pride in his achievements because they meant something more.

But the enthusiasm wasn't always the same as it used to be. It came on occasion, when his plans panned out and there was something worth celebrating, when the world seemed better than the chaos he'd been swept into as a kid. Then there were other times when he felt the spark fade, and he wondered if nearly-thirty really was too old, if spending half of his life fighting evil and championing justice and giving all of himself to a suffering world had left him jaded, bone-weary and mentally unsound.

"Have the bodies been identified?" he asked, sitting in the familiar seat behind his desk looking out over his council.

There was a tension in all of them, the kind that only came after a long peace and too much confidence, when the foundation of their harmonious world began to crack before their very eyes, only they hadn't even seen it coming. The heavy air was smothering, thick with heat from the summer sun and seven hearty men crammed in a room that, if they were to unleash it, could never hope to contain their might.

Murata and Gwendal sat nearest to him at the table in front of his desk, with Gunter and Waltorana beyond them and Conrad and Yozak rounding out the end. Someone had considered calling a formal meeting of the Ten Aristocrats but Yuuri had resisted. Those meetings took too long and resulted in too many arguments when all he wanted were facts and figures and a reason _why_.

Why this? Why now? Why not before?

"A merchant and his wife, both from Caloria," Yozak began. His customary smile did not make an appearance. He sat subdued with his arms folded across the table top, leaning his weight against it. "Their bodies were found in the river just outside the capital. A family of five just over the boundary in Grantz. Their home was set on fire, but they were found in a pigpen on the land they tended under a Lord Edmund Suffolk."

"Has he been questioned?"

"Lord Suffolk's pretty well known for his contempt for humans, but he denied that he or his family had anything to do with it and there's no evidence to prove otherwise."

"Following those deaths," Gunter continued, solemn and pale, his lithe frame taut with an uncommon rage, "the body of a beggar was found in the streets behind a church in Everild, a city in Christ. There were no witnesses to the attack."

"The corpses of two women were discovered by a hunting party in the forests of Bielefeld," Waltorana added. "They were identified as Carlotta Martel and Helene Adenauer from a brothel in nearby Linbridge."

"Three others were found in a field just over the Bielefeld boundary into the lands of Voltaire," Yozak said. "They had no relation to one another. One was a thatcher, the other a butcher, and the last a child belonging to the scullery maid of a local councilman."

"The last, of course," Murata concluded, "was Sir Alwin Granger, one of Lord Weller's men."

For just a moment Yuuri's memory took him back a week to a comfortably slow dance with Wolfram, and Gwendal's grim face bringing that serene moment to a dramatic close. The sudden and unexplained murder of one of Conrad's own had ripped them all from a joyous world into one where the adversity of a time Yuuri had hoped gone forever had risen again. It was a sobering reminder that even a tranquil place, even the thriving kingdom he'd built, was not without its dark side.

Yuuri glanced down the table to where Conrad sat, quiet and composed as if this meeting were no different than any other. His expression was carefully blank, his eyes no less calm than usual, his posture straight but properly so. There was nothing to show anger or distress over the incident, but Yuuri was sure his godfather felt it somewhere. Granger's death was a powerful statement, evidence to a level of hate few of them had expected to see on this scale again. It had opened a window to a series of identical murders, all scattered throughout the kingdom, all committed in the last month.

"Why didn't anyone notice him missing?" Yuuri asked.

"Sir Granger was on leave," Conrad replied, his voice too bland to be real. "He was not expected to return for a fortnight. He has family in Spitzweg he intended to visit."

"Have they been contacted?"

"They said he never made it," Yozak responded. "The last anyone saw of him, he was heading south from the capital. His horse was found dead in a ravine a few miles down the main road, his body dumped in an alley behind a tavern in a town another few miles east. All of his possessions had been taken, clothing, personal effects, everything."

"Gisela has reported that his body shows signs of torture," Gunter revealed. "Burns and lacerations, broken fingers and other fractures, and his arms and legs had been pulled loose, as if he were…" he gulped mournfully before continuing, "as if he'd been placed on the Rack."

"Abducted then," Waltorana said, "and kept in a dungeon?"

Yuuri swallowed down the revulsion. "Do I have the authority to search the dungeons of every manor house and castle in the kingdom?" he asked.

Gwendal, who had been silent for much of the meeting so far, responded frankly. "There is no law to prevent it, though I would not suggest that you do so. It would cause grave unrest among the nobility, and unless we were to discover Sir Granger's missing possessions in their keeping there would be little evidence to tie them to his death."

"But if there were traces of blood…"

"There'd be no way to prove it was his, Shibuya," Murata said.

Thwarted, Yuuri paused to collect himself before he asked, "What about that woman? The one who harassed Wolfram at your party?"

"Her whereabouts at the time of Sir Granger's disappearance have been confirmed. She's been at court for the last three weeks."

"And she just happened to decide to bait Wolfram the _day_ Granger was found?"

"It is a curious coincidence," Gunter admitted, "but there is no evidence to show that it is anything but that."

"Who is she?" Yuuri wondered. "Why have I never seen her or heard of her before?"

"Lady Scarlett Carlisle-Lowe's permanent residence is a manor house she inherited from her late husband, a Lord Carsten Lowe of Radford. While at court she resides in a property in the capital known as Barking Hall located on High Street."

"She was born at her parents' property in Rochfort, close to the border of Cimaron," Waltorana joined the commentary. "Lord and Lady Carlisle were rigid in their stance against humans and ran their household with their strict doctrine against sins of the flesh. They kept their children distant from the court, which they thought evil and corrupt. Lady Scarlett was seen but a few times. When her family was lost during the war she was welcomed into the home of her betrothed. They were married shortly after and lived removed from most of the kingdom's affairs."

"Okay, then what's she doing here now?" Yuuri asked.

"Likely assessing her prospects," Waltorana said. "Lord Lowe died of illness ten years ago. She may have a mind to take a new husband."

"With what she inherited?" Yozak snorted dubiously. "I doubt that. With her family and Lord Lowe's land, she can manage herself just fine without a husband."

Waltorana spared Yozak a quick glance Yuuri thought might have looked scornful, but he could only see half of Waltorana's face until he'd turned away, and by then his expression was back to its former neutrality.

"Perhaps she means to acquire more," Waltorana suggested. "A widow of her youth and distinction could secure quite a lucrative match."

"But how does she know Wolfram?" Yuuri asked.

"I believe the appropriate question would be how does she _not_ know Wolfram?" Gwendal amended. "He is the scion of a royal and an aristocratic family, and the Consort of the King. He is not an unfamiliar figure in the Kingdom, Your Majesty."

"But you said she talked to Wolfram and Rupert Bleddyn like she knew them," Yuuri said with a glance toward Murata.

"She did," Murata agreed, "but that doesn't mean they knew her well."

"They may have met during one of Lady Scarlett's infrequent visits to court," Waltorana explained. "I have no political affiliations with the Carlisles, but Stoffel, as we all well know, was steadfast in his position against the humans until His Majesty assumed the throne. It may be that he welcomed them to Blood Pledge during the height of his power."

"But we don't think she's a threat?" Yuuri asked.

"She has given no indication."

"She used offensive language against your nephew," Yuuri pointed out. "I could have her arrested for that."

One corner of Waltorana's mouth quirked as he raised an inquiring brow. "Will you, Your Majesty?"

It was a tempting idea. With no other clues, taking some sort of direct action would at least make him feel as if he were taking the proper steps to finding them. Wolfram had said nothing about the encounter in the week since it had occurred, but his reaction to her presence had been more than enough for Yuuri to decide the incident hadn't been a minor one. Both Murata and Rupert Bleddyn had informed him of what had been said, and there had been plenty of other witnesses. He had enough evidence to make an issue out of it if he wanted to.

Part of him definitely wanted to. Wolfram was having a hard enough time without being confronted by intolerant people spouting off their hateful opinions. Worse than that was the fact that this Scarlett woman seemed to have done it on purpose. Of course it could have been an accident that she'd bumped into Wolfram. No one could prove that it wasn't, but Rupert insisted that what had occurred after had been purposeful disrespect and a blatant attack against the sovereignty of the King and Prince Consort. It was enough to have her brought in and questioned. It was even deserving of punishment under the law.

The rest of him knew the appeal of Lady Scarlett's arrest for what it was—revenge. He didn't really care what she said about him. It wasn't any worse than being called the 'Wicked Scourge' by the Crown Prince of Massenia, or any of the other insults the humans had thrown at him over the years. If she'd said it to his face it would have upset him, but he didn't think it would have been enough for him to demand reparations. The only reason he thought to do it now, the only reason he even considered it as an option, was because she'd said it to Wolfram instead, and it'd been enough to trigger another attack.

Trying to blame her for the murder of thirteen people because of her behavior at court, when they had absolutely nothing to tie her to a single one of them, was like grasping at straws. They had nothing else to go on, and in his longing for an answer he was rushing to judgment and bringing attention to coincidences when he should be laboring to find facts.

"No," he decided. "I want her questioned, but I don't want her arrested unless there's anything linking her to the death of Granger or any of the others."

"Such leniency may not be wise," Waltorana cautioned him. "If others see the Lady Scarlett's crimes go without punishment, it may encourage further unrest."

"I'm not going to start rounding up people just because they called me a dirty human," Yuuri snapped a retort, sounding a little sharper than he'd meant to. "I never arrested Wolfram for it."

"No, as I recall, you exacted your justice by more physical means."

"You may not wish to make an example of her, Your Majesty," Gwendal easily broke into the exchange, "but the people must recognize that you take the defamation of your character and the offenses done to your husband seriously. Failure to do so could lead to further outspoken behavior from other dissenting voices."

"This woman has already caused too much undue stress to your husband and to your unborn child," Waltorana said.

"I know what she's done," Yuuri replied, "and if you want me to make an example of her then fine, I'll talk to her myself, and I'll make sure people know that I'm doing it, but I'm not going to imprison her for running her mouth at a party."

He watched Waltorana and his advisers exchange a look, Waltorana appearing mutinous and Gwendal and Gunter resigned, while Murata sat quietly and Yozak and Conrad hardly batted an eyelash at the entire conversation. They probably found it all highly predictable by this point.

"Now that that's settled…" Yuuri began once it appeared no one had any other thought to argue. "What about the other twelve bodies? Were they as damaged as Granger's?"

"More or less," Yozak said. "A few seemed to have been treated a bit more severely than others. The two prostitutes especially. They'd both gotten treatment from the Pear, so it's likely whoever did it also took issue with their profession."

Waltorana made a face like he took issue with their profession, but he didn't say anything.

"The Pear?" Yuuri risked asking.

"Torture device," Yozak explained. "Made of four sections shaped together like a pear. Inserted in the lady parts, the anus, or the mouth and spread open."

Yuuri felt his face pale and wondered if maybe Waltorana's expression had been for that reason instead of what he'd originally thought.

"O-Oh…" he stammered.

"It used to be a common torture technique for adulterers," Yozak continue, "but it fell out of style when adultery stopped being viewed as such a heinous crime. It's still used occasionally on blasphemers, and sometimes when a prostitute's found dead someone will have tried to emulate it. Probably trying to make a statement."

"A-And these women were… uhh…"

"Gisela claims the damage done to them is consistent with use of the Pear," Gunter said, his voice low, quietly miserable.

Yuuri shifted in his seat and did his best to put a damper on his imagination. "So… what? They were all picked up, dragged off somewhere, tortured to death, and then dumped somewhere else?" he asked.

"Yes, Your Majesty, that seems to be the case."

"All accept the family of five in Grantz," Yozak amended. "They were killed near their home and arranged in the sty."

"Like animals," Yuuri assumed.

"Most likely," Yozak agreed. "The rest of the bodies were burned and lacerated pretty heavily, some had their fingers crushed with a thumbscrew. The beggar looked like he'd had his feet roasted. The merchant's wife clearly had a meeting with the Spider."

Yuuri opened his mouth to ask for clarification but quickly decided he didn't want to know. He swallowed instead and asked, "And we know they're all connected because each of the bodies was branded with the same mark?"

"Yup. Except the ones in Grantz. They'd had it carved onto their chests."

"Do we know what it means?"

"It's an ancient symbol said to invoke a divine power to protect against humans," Murata said. "When the Great One first led the demon tribe into this land, there were still pockets of human communities scattered throughout. Wary or superstitious demon tribesmen would mark their houses with the symbol to ward off human enemies."

"So why use it now?"

"The perpetrators may have adopted it as a means of identifying their victims as human."

"What, like saying 'this dude is human so he deserved to die'?"

Gunter nodded gravely. "That seems to be the most plausible conclusion," he said. "All of the victims were human or of human descent."

"Well, this just-" Yuuri began, realized he didn't know what he'd meant to say, and ended with an impassioned, "this _sucks_."

"That would be one way of putting it," Yozak agreed.

"What are we going to do?" Yuuri asked. "If there isn't any evidence and searching people's dungeons isn't going to turn up anything conclusive, then how else are we supposed to find the people who did this? I doubt anyone's going to have Granger's stuff lying around waiting for me to find it."

This was the part of his job that he hated—running around in circles trying to find an answer that wasn't likely to show itself just because he wanted it to. It had been years since he'd had to face anything of this magnitude and he was beginning to realize that he was woefully out of practice.

His advisers seemed to be in a similar position. None of them said anything for quite a while, which meant they either didn't want to admit they had no idea or they were thinking very hard. Yuuri hoped it was the latter.

Finally, Waltorana said, "Surely we can all agree that due to the time frame, the distance between incidents, and the number of victims in certain cases, we are likely dealing with more than a single individual."

"You think it's a cult?" Yuuri wondered.

"A _faction_, yes," Waltorana replied, "ostensibly comprised of those whose opinions pit them against the humans. They may even take issue with your claim to the throne."

"But the Great One picked me," Yuuri said.

"Few people have ever heard him speak," Gwendal pointed out. "Thus there are some who have been known to question the word of the High Priestess. Most accept you by virtue of your power. Others may not deem it sufficient evidence."

"So you think this is a rebellion?"

"Perhaps not yet," Waltorana said, "but that does not mean it will not escalate. It may be best to set a spy among the court, sniff out the opposing parties through rumor and opinion."

Instinctively, Yuuri's gaze immediately fell on Yozak.

Waltorana met the assumption with a sneer. "Yes, _do _send the half-human into the lion's den of human enmity," he declared with obvious sarcasm. "Pay no heed to the little fact that most of the court knows both he and Lord Weller as the two sole survivors of the Battle of Luttenberg."

Yuur bristled with indignation but managed to keep his temper in check. "Then who were you suggesting?"

"Myself."

"You're joking, right?" Yuuri asked.

"I assure you, Your Majesty, I do not _joke_ when there has been baseless torture and brutal murder conducted within my lands, murder upon two half-human women during a time when my nephew and heir has been installed as the Prince Consort of a human king and carries within him a half-human child."

"Okay, okay, sorry," Yuuri apologized, shifting in his seat again and trying not to feel too guilty. "What makes you think you can do it?"

"Certainly I have no need to remind you of my family's previous position on matters such as these."

"So you're going to pretend you hate me?"

"Precisely."

Yuuri thought it over for a few moments before he said, "Somehow I don't think you'll have to pretend too hard."

No matter how many years they'd been working with one another instead of against each another, Yuuri had never really been able to make himself believe that Waltorana _liked_ him the way his other advisers liked him. He might be _impressed_ by him in certain situations and even _respect_ him at others—this conversation notwithstanding—but to say that there was any deep affection between the two of them was probably a bit of a stretch. At most, Waltorana tolerated him because he'd proven himself and his power, because it was his duty by word of the Great One, because Yuuri had somehow managed to crack a smile out of him once or twice, and because Waltorana's only nephew had married him.

Usually they got along well enough. Less emotionally exhausting meetings tended to go quite well. It was the tense moments they needed to work on, when Waltorana's attitude flared and instinct told Yuuri to respond back in kind when his intelligence was put into question.

When it came down to it, Waltorana reminded him a lot of the pretentious snob Wolfram used to be—the Wolfram he'd smacked over dinner and subsequently dropped on his ass (twice) during a duel. He'd never had the opportunity to do either to Waltorana, but that didn't mean he hadn't ever let himself imagine it when Waltorana stopped being friendly and got into one of his rotten moods.

"Lord von Bielefeld may be best suited for the task," Gunter piped up in an attempt to smooth the situation over. "With his history any sign of dissent would be far more believable than if Gwendal or I were to attempt it. He and Prince Wolfram are well-known for their former opinions."

"Wait, if this is just going to make things worse for Wolfram…"

"You think I would involve him?" Waltorana retorted.

"Even if you don't want to, he might end up being involved anyway," Yuuri argued. "That crazy woman Scarlett's already done enough without someone else coming in to make it worse."

"This may be our best option, Your Majesty," Gwendal intoned.

Yuuri frowned at them all and stubbornly crossed his arms over his chest, leaning back in his chair to simmer in silence and wait for someone to come up with a better idea. He stared long enough to catch Conrad's eye, but his godfather's expression was still carefully blank.

In the end, it was Murata who spoke.

"We'll keep Prince Wolfram as far removed from the situation as possible," he said. "Gisela's confined him to partial bed rest. He won't be making many public appearances until after the birth. We'll limit his interactions with the court and restrict his guests to the people we know we can trust."

"I myself will leave court," Waltorana joined in again, "following a few carefully placed comments to certain individuals I know to be inclined against further human integration. I will then invite others to Bielefeld Castle and ingratiate myself. Provided the perpetrators are indeed the manner of individual we believe them to be, I have no doubt that I will be able to file among them once I have earned the appropriate amount of trust."

"You make it sound so easy," Yuuri observed disbelievingly.

"It's the best hand we have to play, Shibuya," Murata said.

Yuuri still didn't like it. It seemed dangerous and liable to fail, and if he were honest he didn't relish the thought of Waltorana being involved—for Wolfram's sake—especially if it meant Wolfram might potentially be dragged into the whole thing. No matter how careful they were, no matter what they did to make sure Wolfram was protected from all of it, there was still a chance that someone would consider him. They couldn't keep Wolfram out of the public eye forever, and there was no telling how long it would take Waltorana to successfully infiltrate this cult or faction and whoever had murdered all of these people.

Yet he didn't see what other choice they had.

"What if you get caught?" he asked.

"Then I am sure I will suffer the consequences," Waltorana said without pause. His voice didn't waver and his expression remained strong. He seemed resolved.

Yuuri couldn't think of any other arguments to make. "Fine. Do it. Go tell everyone how you think I'm a horrible king and a dirty human or whatever it takes to get them to believe you, and then find out who did this so they can have a nice, long talk with the Demon King."

Gwendal snorted. Gunter looked uncomfortable and Conrad's blank look finally slipped to show a hint of worry. Murata and Yozak each chuckled in amusement.

Waltorana's mouth curved into an actual smile. "I think I may enjoy this," he said.

* * *

Rides through the capital used to have a way of lifting Yuuri's spirits. They still did for the most part, but every once in a while the atmosphere of the escort made him feel like he was riding in a funeral procession. This was particularly true whenever the kingdom was being faced with a crisis. The crowds in the streets had a way of reflecting the mood of a situation. Where there was cause for celebration, they cheered and threw flowers and let their children follow after the horses to laugh and sing praises, but when the days turned grievous the faces that met him were much more subdued, the adulation repressed until such a time that they could be happy again.

With the news of Sir Alwin Granger's death and the discovery of two similarly mutilated bodies in a river-bend just beyond the city, emotions were running high and a sort of fear had begun to spread through the populace. There was still cheering, and flowers, and happy faces smiling up at him, but it seemed quieter than usual, restrained, and full of a hope they hadn't had need to rely on in years.

What was there to hope for when peace had come and all was well?

Hope was the tool of those lost in shadow, crawling through the darkness and searching for the light.

Conrad rode beside him. To the rest of the world he might have looked completely detached from the entire situation, as unaffected by it as if he were one who felt no remorse or operated with an apathetic attitude toward the battle between humans and demons, but Yuuri knew his godfather was not without emotion. He was sure there was more going on beneath the surface, much more than even he would ever be allowed to see.

"Are you okay?" he asked, though he knew it was a stupid question.

How could anyone who'd been through what Conrad had been through be okay when the ravaged body of one of his own men had been found lying in a back alley like a sack of garbage?

Conrad spared him a look that didn't read as much of anything. At first Yuuri suspected his godfather might lie to him, pretend as if all was well as he might have when Yuuri had been younger, but after he'd opened his mouth once and failed to say anything, Conrad tried again and simply said, "I will be."

To Yuuri, that was enough. It was an admission as much as it was a promise, and he needed to dig no further than that.

They came to a grand house on High Street, tall and wide and the sort of building Yuuri would have never thought to call a house prior to his arrival in this world, because houses were smaller and meant more for family than affairs of state. This place was a mini-castle in and of itself, a proper residence for a noblewoman of good standing and ample wealth. There were others like it set throughout the finer areas of the capital city, temporary dwellings for those whose business and politics required they be in closer proximity to the King.

Yuuri dismounted there in front of Barking Hall, before the eyes of commoner and noble alike. He knew when they'd understood his intentions, listened to the quiet hiss of whispers traveling through the lingering crowds and curious passersby. Over the years, he'd learned when and how to be deliberate. He knew how best to make a statement. Often his presence served well enough. He used his coloring to full effect, put aside all disguise and let himself be recognized, wore a face he'd learned from Gwendal, the sort that said he couldn't be intimidated, and took the posture of his proper husband to display an air of majesty.

It wasn't perfect. He was too compassionate for sneers and sour frowns, too kind for unnecessary insults. He still exuded a warmth that had many bowing with smiles and well-wishes that were more genuine than obligatory, but he felt the extra effort forced people to take him more seriously. His full uniform made the occasion official; the determined set of his shoulders meant it was a serious affair.

He entered with no warning or announcement—a case of poor manners, or it would have been if he weren't the King. He would have preferred to conduct this meeting with less force, but his advisers insisted and, in the end, he knew they were right.

"I'm here to talk to the lady of the house," he said kindly enough to the first household servant that stopped to gawk and sputter a shocked, "Y-Your Majesty…"

"I… I don't believe the Lady Scarlett was expecting you," the servant continued.

"Surely she will graciously welcome His Majesty nonetheless," Yuuri heard Conrad say as his godfather came up beside him.

The servant looked between the two of them, his face caught between surprise and something that looked like revulsion.

"I… yes… if you would only… I will inform her of your arrival…"

He turned as if to scamper off and find her, intending to leave them there in the entrance hall. Yuuri shared a looked with Conrad and then followed after him. Years ago he might have paused to look around the inside of the house and stare in awe at the expensive decorations—the marble floors, the golden fixtures, the portraits and sculptures and tapestries—but after fourteen years it had nearly lost its effect.

The servant turned when he noticed his steps being shadowed.

"I will only be a moment, Your Majesty," he said, "and Lady Scarlett may not even be taking visitors."

"I insist," Yuuri replied.

"W-Why… yes, of course, but…"

"It's important."

The servant looked as if he didn't quite believe him. He hesitated at the bottom of a large flight of stairs before he seemed to come to a decision and shouted, "Lady Scarlett!"

His voice echoed through the large hall. Yuuri waited, watching suspiciously, staring around for any other sign of life.

"Lady Scarlett!" the servant called again.

Finally a door on the upper level opened, and soft footsteps could be heard padding across the rugs lining the floor above. Soon after, a woman Yuuri was sure he'd never seen before came striding gracefully down the stairs.

His first impression was that she was a very dainty woman—shorter than most of the women he'd come to call his friends and family, and her thin frame lent a certain frailty to her body. Her complexion was very fair—"lily-white," as all the old stories would say. Yuuri suspected Murata's party was the first few hours of sun she'd gotten in quite some time. If she weren't walking upright, with a poise he'd come to expect from the members of the nobility, and if the strength in her expression weren't enough for him to conclude that she was still very capable of taking care of herself despite her stature, he would have thought she looked a bit sickly.

Her manner of dress seemed old-fashioned compared to the popular style of the ladies of the court. The squared neckline of her deep blue gown was low enough for him to see the tops of her small breasts, but that was the only thing he thought could be considered risqué about it. The bodice was tight and rigid, highlighting her thin waist while keeping her posture straight; the sleeves were long, tighter on her upper arms before widening over her forearms and draping over her hands, and the skirt was long and full.

Curiously her hair was loose. Yuuri would have expected someone of her severe fashion and demeanor to wear it styled back, but it fell in rich auburn waves down the length of her back.

"What is it, Erwin?" she asked.

Her voice, too, was not what he'd expected. From her appearance he would have imagined something light and airy, girlish like his mother. Instead, her voice had a low, hard edge to it, the kind he heard in his mother-in-law when Lady Celi took control of a situation and proved exactly why she was considered one of the foremost women in the kingdom.

"M-My Lady," the servant began, "His Majesty has arrived and wishes for an audience."

"His Majesty?" Lady Scarlett asked. Her gray eyes locked on Yuuri as she descended the last few stairs.

"I'm sorry I didn't send word ahead," Yuuri said.

Scarlett's answering smile was hardly welcoming, but it wasn't nasty enough for Yuuri to feel threatened by it. "On the contrary, Your Majesty, I knew that you would come."

She looked over the small group of guards he'd brought with him. By the slight narrowing of her eyes he was sure she'd seen something to take offense to. Admittedly he'd picked his men in the hopes that it would get that very reaction. It was the only explicit affront he'd intended to make, something of a quiet revenge for what she'd said to Wolfram, picking notably half-human guards to accompany him when he knew what her feelings were on the matter. Conrad remained at his side, only a single step back. Behind him were a dozen or so other soldiers in the Weller uniform, all of them armed, all of them coldly resolute.

"If you would follow me, Your Majesty," Scarlett said when her gaze drew back to him.

She led him to the left of the stairs, to a large room arranged with couches and chairs and low wooden tables. The curtains were pulled over the windows, cutting off any source of natural light. It seemed she relied on nothing more than candle and firelight. In these dim confines, it was easy to forget that it was almost high noon.

"Please, have a seat," she offered. "Erwin, would you have some tea sent it?"

"That's not necessary," Yuuri told her. He stood by the arm of a chair but didn't sit down, his guards filing in and positioning themselves close behind. "This won't take long."

The smile on Scarlett's face looked forced. "Very well," she allowed. "You have something you wish to discuss with me."

Seeing no reason to stall, Yuuri jumped right into the conversation. "You talked to Wolfram at Mura-… at the Great Sage's birthday party."

The correction came a little too late. Of all the things he'd needed to get used to after becoming an integral part of this world, the formal speech and modes of address still hadn't really caught on. When he tried it, his tongue always felt too clumsy in his mouth.

"Yes, I believe I did," Scarlett replied. She mirrored him and stood instead of sitting, her hands loose and easy by her sides.

"You upset him," Yuuri said.

"If I upset him, Your Majesty, I assure you it would only have been because he knew my comments to be true."

"You insulted him."

"Legitimate concerns are viewed as insults now?" she asked, her brows arching with a curiosity that looked fake.

"There wasn't anything _concerned_ about what you said," Yuuri countered. "You said it to hurt him."

"Not hurt him, Your Majesty. I said it to bring him to his senses. For too long our enemies have been allowed to overrun our lands," she said and paused to pass a derisive glower over Yuuri and the guards with him. "How are we to preserve our honor when the purest of us choose to soil themselves by acting the submissive to humans?"

"Wolfram isn't the poster-boy for your little revolution."

"I'm afraid I don't understand the reference," Scarlett responded blandly.

"He isn't symbolic for whatever it is you're fighting for," Yuuri said.

"On the contrary," she began again, and Yuuri decided he hated the way she said that with that tone of superiority laced heavily in her voice, "Prince Wolfram descends from two of the purest families within the realm."

"That doesn't mean anything."

"Perhaps not to you," Scarlett allowed, "but then I wouldn't expect a human to understand anything about the purity of blood."

"There's nothing special about blood," Yuuri insisted. "Your blood isn't any different from mine."

"Yes, that _is_ what humans like to say when they refuse to accept their own inadequacies," she said with a barely repressed sneer.

"I don't see what being human or demon has to do with anything. Being demon doesn't make someone a good king any more than being human makes them a bad one. The only difference between us is magic and age, but even that doesn't really matter in this situation because I can use magic anyway."

"A curious case, I do admit."

"Then what's your problem?"

Scarlett appraised him, letting her eyes travel over his frame from head to toe, paying particular attention to his eyes and hair before she took on a look of contempt. Her refusal to restrain herself was unsettling. Yuuri was used to the people with power in his lands treading a little more carefully around him, holding a straight face like Gwendal, or stumbling over themselves like Gunter and Stoffel. Few people had ever truly advertised their dislike. They whispered and commented to each other but never said it to his face. Not since Wolfram, at least, but then most of the court had heard the way that story had ended.

This woman hardly seemed to care. She had little respect and no apparent fear for what he could do to her under the law for something so minor as an insult. She either _wanted_ the punishment, in which case he thought she was crazy—unless she intended to use it as some sort of a political message against him—or she didn't believe it was in him to do so. Tales of his mercy had traveled far and wide. Most people had come to appreciate it, but with this woman… he was beginning to realize that there were some people who might try to purposefully abuse it.

"My _problem_, Your Majesty," she mocked him, "is that you are a human man ruling our noble land, tainting the purest of us with your seed so that you may place your human spawn on the throne. You, as do all the humans, cross into our kingdom and pollute our monarchy with your drivel about peace and equality, as if we can so easily forget the sins that have been done against us, the oppression we have faced at the hands of your kind."

"That was years ago," Yuuri said. "Time changes things."

"It changes _nothing_," Scarlett replied, her eyes burning rage. "Our proud demon race has no need for the rule of inferior creatures."

"And I'm inferior?"

"You are human," she said, as if it were answer enough. "You will die long before the rest of us. I pray that with your death our kingdom can return to its former glory."

Out of the corner of his eye, Conrad shifted, one hand twitching by the sword at his hip. "Lady Scarlett," he said, "it is treason to foretell the death of the King."

Yuuri made a motion with his hand to stop him. "It's fine," he reassured him. At his back he could sense the rest of his guards shifting restlessly.

He turned back to Scarlett, already tired of arguing with her when he knew nothing he said was going to be enough to change her mind. There was a steel in her despite her slight frame, a strength of mind he could almost envy for the certainty it gave her. She was formidable in a debate, but he couldn't imagine her doing anything more than that. She stood there spouting off her hateful messages, fuming at his audacity to bring human guards into her home, and he wondered if she was even capable of anything else. She made no move to strike. She did not even have her own guards present in the room—again as if she were without fear, as if whatever he decided to do to her would serve a purpose only she knew.

"I'm banishing you from court, Lady Scarlett," he announced.

Her thin mouth slid into a smirk. "That's quite alright, Your Majesty," she said. "I have no fondness for it in the first place."

"Furthermore," he continued, "you are barred from communicating with Wolfram in any way. You are not allowed to speak to him, you are not allowed to have other people speak to him for you, and if you so much as write a letter to him you'll find soldiers at your door to take you to the cell my advisers want me to go ahead and throw you in right now."

"This is how you treat him?" Scarlett wondered, her eyes growing smaller, her gaze growing sharper by the second. "You isolate him from those who wish to free him from your tyranny? This is how you've tied him to you, by hiding him away and forcibly converting his mind to accept you and your human principles?"

"I don't know where you're getting this stuff from, Lady Scarlett. I haven't forced Wolfram to do anything."

"Was this your plan all along? To take the purest of us for yourself and force the rest of us to conform to your new version of the world order?"

Yuuri didn't know what to say, so he simply stood there and stared.

"Prince Wolfram's purity and talents are _wasted _as your consort. He has no duty but the detriment of birthing your progeny. He could have had a glorious future and heralded the freedom of a pure, demon race, but you've seen to that, of course. You've _stripped_ him of all manner of pride and set him up as a symbol of your conquest against our people."

Lost and completely out of his comfort level, Yuuri stared for just a little longer. He couldn't promise that his eyes hadn't widened to almost comical proportions, because the raging lunacy he was hearing from this women boggled his mind so much he wondered if he might have hit his head on the way in and the injury had been enough to jog his brain and cause him to hear something completely different than what people were actually saying, like he'd gone back in time to when he was fifteen and couldn't appropriately communicate with his people anymore.

Between this and the things he'd been told she'd said to Wolfram, Yuuri couldn't tell if Scarlett was angrier at him or his husband. She'd practically told Wolfram he was a whore without lowering herself to saying the word, but now that Yuuri was facing her she spoke to him like it were all his fault and he was using Wolfram as some sort of a pawn to further his control over the demon race. He wondered if she was alone in her thoughts or if there were other people who shared them, and he began to think that there was something very, very wrong in his kingdom that he hadn't been aware of until this very moment.

This level of hate couldn't just randomly pop up. Like whoever had murdered Sir Granger and those twelve other people, this depth of feeling lasted for years. She'd probably been living with these delusions since he'd taken the throne, but had never had the opportunity to say anything about it until now, when he was married to Wolfram and they were expecting a baby and it seemed his human influence was spreading and warping the kingdom somehow. This woman was so passionate in her hatred that she couldn't even see the truth.

How was he supposed to answer that? What was he supposed to do?

"Lady Scarlett," he said as gently as he possibly could, "if you keep talking like this and causing trouble for my family, then I'm going to have to banish you from the capital."

Her face had already taken on a bit of color during her passionate rant. It darkened at his comment until her face had twisted into something dark and ugly. "I _own_ this property," she said.

"I can seize it if you're convicted of a crime," he reminded her. "What you said to Wolfram was enough to have you arrested. What you've said to me could be considered treason. I'm not going to arrest you right now because I don't think that's fair, but I will if you give me another reason to."

She opened her mouth to say something else, but she hesitated for a moment and finally seemed to think over her options. When she came to a decision, she first clamped her mouth shut to glare at him before she said, "You can be sure, _Your Majesty_, that I will return to Radford in the morning."

He was thrown off by her tone and the mean glare of her eyes. He didn't know why she bothered him so much. When he stripped it of all her fancy words and ridiculous accusations, what she was saying wasn't too much different than he'd come to expect some people to think, but never say. She was the only one who had ever dared, and it shocked him. He couldn't understand where it _came _from. He couldn't understand what could have possibly made her _think _these things when he didn't think he'd ever given her any reason to.

Of course, she had kept herself removed from the court, hadn't seen him at his best and could only think of him at his worst. She hadn't seen him interact with Wolfram or any of the others, not for more than a few hours at the party, and so she could only base her opinions on assumptions. She didn't _know _him. Really, she didn't know much of anything, just the same paranoid babble she'd probably listened to as a child the way Wolfram had heard things from Stoffel and Waltorana.

It wasn't her fault, he kept telling himself. It wasn't her fault that she thought like this. It had been ingrained into her the same way it had been ingrained into Wolfram. He shouldn't punish her for something that she'd been led to believe by other people who should have known better. She was just parroting things people had probably been saying for hundreds or thousands of years now.

But there was something about her… there was something that made him nervous, something that pulled at his gut and made him feel a little sick. She'd been so calm before, forcibly polite and at ease in her own home, but now the look on her face was almost deranged. Faced with him, faced with a retinue of human guards, she became something else. She lost the comfort she retained around other people of her race and dredged something up in her that was… he didn't want to call it "evil," because she hadn't done anything more than talk, but if thoughts and words could be evil the way that actions were then hers certainly bore considering.

Suddenly the large, imposing house felt too small. It was too dark. The air was too heavy. With the curtains closed the candlelight left most of the room to shadow. The house felt wicked. It felt wrong. He looked at Scarlett and he wondered if he'd been wrong to think that this was all she was capable of. Small and thin as she was, he couldn't imagine her launching a successful attack on her own, not on him, not right now, but he knew size wasn't everything. What would she do if she ever had the chance?

What would any of them do?

Gwendal would have wanted him to take her in. At his back he could feel a similar anxiety emanating from his guards, but to arrest her on unfounded suspicions… to arrest her against his principles… that would be just as wrong as everything she'd said to him here.

In the end, Yuuri simply nodded and thought making a quick getaway would be for the best for all parties involved.

"Thank you for your time," he said lamely.

He turned to leave without anther word. He felt he'd gotten his expectations across pretty well, and if he hadn't or she chose to defy him then he'd follow through with his threat and have someone arrest her, but for now he wanted to remove himself from her presence and her house and everything that reeked of venom and hate and made him shiver with the power of it.

He passed a startled and trembling servant Erwin on the way to the door, but couldn't decide if the man was trembling due to fright or disgust. If he shared his employer's opinions then Yuuri figured the answer was simple—if it wasn't both, it was definitely the latter. Whatever the case, Yuuri didn't care to stand around and subject himself to it any longer. Instead, he ignored the man and pushed through the door to burst out into the cobbled streets and bright sunlight.

The weight of terror that had pressed down on him in Barking Hall lifted almost immediately. Yuuri stopped to catch his breath before he even realized the pace of it had changed, and he wondered if this was anything like what Wolfram felt like during his attacks. This was bad enough. This unexplained fear, this crushing instinct and unreasonable suspicion… if it ever got any worse than the twist in his gut and the chill up his spine and the terrible thought that something was _wrong… _he didn't know how he could bear it.

A few people remained from the crowd that had gathered upon his arrival, their whispers breaking out again as soon as they saw him emerge. Yuuri did what he could to keep himself composed, taking a breath of summer air thick with the smells of the city—meat and dirt and sweat and piss—and he tried to ignore the rolling in his stomach and the tight feeling in his chest.

This wasn't right, he thought. Something was going on. Why hadn't they noticed it before?

Conrad's hand landed on his shoulder and squeezed, turning him just enough for his godfather to be able to look into his face. Yuuri saw a familiar concern and tried to smile in response.

"Are you alright?" Conrad asked, his voice too low to be heard by anyone else.

"Yeah," Yuuri said and rushed to nod, "yeah, I'm okay. I just…"

He looked back at the house, watching the remainder of his guards file out. Erwin shut the door behind them with a final suspicious glance. From the outside the house looked entirely innocent—just another grand building on a street of others like it—but the woman inside and the shadows within rankled something in him, made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

"Can I have her house searched when she's gone?" Yuuri asked.

Something about Conrad's expression changed. Yuuri couldn't quite decide what it was—it wasn't like his mouth quirked up or his eyes widened—but Yuuri thought his godfather might have approved of the idea.

"You can," he answered, "though she may still have servants stationed on the premises. She'll know about it if you do."

"I don't care," Yuuri said. He was surprised by how firm his own voice sounded. "Have guards stationed around the block overnight. I want people inside as soon as she's left tomorrow morning."

"You suspect her of something?"

"I don't know," Yuuri admitted. His gut told him something wasn't right even as his brain warned him he may be getting too far ahead of himself, grasping at straws again. "If she's got something to hide she'll probably take it with her, but I don't want this to blow up in my face while she's here. If she feels comfortable enough to think she can get away with what she's already done, then maybe she'll be dumb enough to leave something behind thinking I won't go after it."

"Let's discuss this with Gwendal once we've returned to the castle," Conrad said.

Yuuri agreed and the conversation was put on hold for a time. When he felt he'd calmed enough, he climbed back onto his horse and waited for Conrad to give the order to station guards on the street. Then his godfather and their remaining retinue mounted and fell into position around him, turning to maneuver back through the crowds and ascend the summit up to the castle.

People cheered as he passed as they had on his way into the city. There were smiles and laughter, but still that reserve, still that distant fear that everything they'd known for the last fourteen years was about to slip away.

Yuuri forced a smile in return, waved with the sort of energy he'd had when he was fifteen, while something heavy and cold settled deep within his chest.

The sun was still shining, but it had risen on a different world.

* * *

"_No_!" an aggressive below cut through the relative peace of the castle, sharing its displeasure with all those close enough to hear. "Those curtains are _hideous_!"

It used to be that seeing Wolfram's face at the end of the day would set Yuuri's heart and mind at ease, save him from the burden of a long day of kingship and the overwhelming responsibilities that weighed down his spirits. There was a reason he'd kept Wolfram as far removed from politics as he could after the wedding. He'd lied about it at first, told himself it was to protect his new husband—as if Wolfram needed protecting—then that he only wanted to give Wolfram the chance to relax and be happy and do what he wanted instead of worrying so much about duty after over ninety years of it taking up his entire life.

The truth was hardly so noble. If anything, the truth was selfish. He kept Wolfram uninvolved because when he returned from the office at night he didn't want to keep talking politics, he didn't want to keep thinking about the random stresses of his day. He wanted to talk about other things when they were together, he wanted them to have a separate life from all of that—or as separate as it could possibly be when they were the King and Prince Consort. When he saw Wolfram's face when he came back to their room he wanted to keep feeling that rush of relief, that sudden ease of tension that meant the day was done and they didn't have to be anything more than two people in love.

These days that rush of relief didn't come as often as it used to. Some days it felt like a pale imitation of itself. Other days it didn't even come at all. The sudden upheaval of a life Yuuri had previously thought to be a happy one had nearly taken away one of his few remaining comforts, and he was still trying to figure out how to pick up the pieces without being insensitive or making it even worse.

"Wolf," he said, standing in the doorway of a room too far from their room for his liking. "Wolf, you should be in bed."

They'd never talked about a nursery. They'd never talked about much of anything pertaining to the baby, really—just names, and a few random comments here and there during Gisela's examinations. Yuuri didn't want to bring it up if all it would do was upset Wolfram, and Wolfram seemed content to just go through his entire pregnancy pretending as if there wasn't going to be an extra person between them several weeks down the road. As far as Yuuri was aware, Wolfram had no plans to care for the baby that didn't involve wet-nurses and nannies, nor did he seem to have any desire to be in the baby's life any more than he had to be.

It pained Yuuri, though he would never say so. He plastered on smiles and let himself be happy when Wolfram didn't seem to mind it, but on the inside he let himself feel hurt, he let himself grieve for his child and the fact that it was unwanted by one of its parents, he let himself feel upset for his husband who was being forced to go through with this because of the unwillingness to defy social expectations. To Yuuri, who had grown up with two parents who might not have always gotten along, but who'd never held back their love for _him, _everything about this situation with Wolfram felt like a mockery of a real family.

Every time he saw Wolfram he couldn't imagine living his life without him, couldn't imagine wanting so much with anyone else. Every time a little foot would poke against Wolfram's stomach, he understood exactly what it was his parents had felt for him—and for each other—over all those years, and it literally took his breath away. Cliché as it was to say so, he felt _complete_. Once the initial doubts had gone away, he'd let himself admit that he wanted this. He wanted Wolfram and the baby and a family, just like it used to be.

Maybe he was just being selfish about this, too.

Wolfram turned to look at him with an irritated frown. "I've spent enough time in bed," he said. "This room has to be finished by the time the child's born, and if I left it entirely up to these imbeciles they'd never make it worthy of a prince or princess."

That was all it seemed Wolfram ever thought of the baby—just the means to an end, just a lucky coincidence and a temporary distraction he'd accepted as a way of providing the kingdom with an heir, which he then meant to distance himself from so that he may go on to pretend as if everything had returned to normal.

It made Yuuri angry, not at Wolfram—who he could never seem to blame no matter the words he spoke or the actions he made—but at the world for not being the perfect place he'd always wanted it to be.

Currently the nursery looked like the front lines of a war between Wolfram and the people he'd brought in to decorate. There was furniture arranged in random spots around the room, as if none of them could agree upon where it should be placed. Fabric of all kind and color littered the floor and cluttered the tables, waiting for a decision to be made on bedding and curtains. The only piece of order among the chaos were a few stuffed animals that lined the shelves on the walls, malformed bearbees and sandbears and dragons he knew to have been knitted by Gwendal.

Lovely as he was sure the room would be once it was finished, there was a part of Yuuri that resented it. It seemed like too much of a separation—a fine place to keep the baby when it was old enough, but nothing he wanted for a newborn. He wanted to be able to keep it close, to hold it and care for it and treat it like he thought they were _supposed _to, but Wolfram didn't seem to share the thought.

"Wolf, Gisela said you should be getting plenty of rest," he tried again.

Green eyes lifted and circled around in an exasperated roll. "I rested earlier," he said. "I _am_ still allowed out of bed."

"As long as you don't stress yourself out," Yuuri allowed.

"And I _would_ be avoiding stress if these fools could do anything right!"

Yuuri looked passed Wolfram to the gathering of people moving furniture and displaying fabric after fabric Wolfram had summarily rejected. They looked tired and hopeless, having no doubt spent much of the afternoon subjected to Wolfram's temper with no clue how to ease it or go about their work without inflaming it further.

"Come on," he said when he looked back at Wolfram, stepping toward him and reaching out to gently take hold of one of his arms. "Come back with me. I just finished work. You can worry about this again tomorrow. It's not going anywhere."

Wolfram looked like he wanted to argue, shot a glare around the room that had the workers flinching back warily, and when it seemed he could find nothing that pleased him he sniffed haughtily and turned away.

"_Fine_," he huffed.

He pulled his arm away and stalked out of the room. Yuuri watched his retreating back for a few moments, then released the workers from the burden of their duty for the night and sent them off for a relaxing evening before they were forced to deal with an irascible Wolfram again the very next day. Then he made to follow his husband, leaving the nursery behind with hardly a second glance to make the too-long walk down the hall to his bedroom.

Wolfram hadn't climbed into bed yet but was in the midst of changing into his nightgown—not the pink of former days but a new one designed to make room for his tummy, made of a thinner fabric to combat the summer heat. The waistline stopped abruptly beneath his chest, where it tied off with a line of pale yellow ribbon. The rest of it fell over his stomach, hips, and thighs in folds of dark blue, hanging on his shoulders with caps for sleeves and leaving his lower legs bare.

He would never understand Wolfram's penchant for nightgowns. At some point they'd stopped being a way to entice him and became a matter of comfort, and he wondered if Wolfram had always worn them and just didn't want to admit it to him when he'd once questioned the choice and insisted it was weird. Long night-shirts seemed to be the norm among his people anyway, with the wealthiest adorning theirs with lace and other lining. Wolfram claimed they were comfortable, but Yuuri had never really been able to understand how that could be the case when they twisted out of place and rode up high after a night of tossing and turning.

Yuuri thought his husband looked beautiful nonetheless. He always had, though as a kid he'd restricted himself to the more innocent descriptions of "pretty" and "cute." There was something about the large swell of his stomach that seemed to augment Wolfram's already stunning features. Wolfram insisted he didn't see it; he probably wasn't lying about that. Yuuri suspected his husband felt pretty terrible about himself and likely hated the way he looked, but there were moments when Yuuri just had to stop and stare and remind himself to breathe.

Sometimes the clichés fit. Other time he only wished they were true.

When he was finished changing, Wolfram stomped heavily over to the bed and lumbered up onto the mattress. Yuuri forced himself to stop staring before he could be caught and took his husband's place by the wardrobe, digging around for his nightclothes. They weren't much different than what he'd always worn—still just pants and a shirt in the bright blue of the Seibu Lions.

"I wanted to talk to you," he said once he'd pulled off his uniform and shimmied his pajama pants up his legs.

He heard a rustle as Wolfram shifted on the mattress behind him, then asked, "What about?"

Yuuri didn't respond until he'd finished changing and turned to join his husband.

Wolfram had propped himself up against a few larges pillow, already half under the blankets. He looked… "large" was really the only word Yuuri could think of off the top of his head whenever he saw Wolfram's stomach these days. He was careful never to vocalize the observation because he knew Wolfram would take it the wrong way and try to turn it into an insult instead of the general observation it was meant to be. It was only early-July. According to Gisela's estimate, they had until mid-September before the baby was born, but sometimes when Yuuri let himself look at Wolfram's stomach he thought he looked large enough as it was.

To think they had ten more weeks of this…

He approached the bed warily, and instead of circling around to the other side he came up along Wolfram's half and leaned up against it down by Wolfram's feet.

"I wanted to talk to you about Scarlett," Yuuri said, slow and careful.

Wolfram's eyes narrowed. He lifted his arms to fold them across his chest, but when they ended up resting over his belly he pulled them away and set them by his sides again, gripping the blanket in his hands.

"There isn't anything to talk about," he said.

"You know that's not true, Wolf," Yuuri continued. "It's been almost a month and you haven't said a thing."

"I have nothing to say," Wolfram insisted. His gaze shifted away to stare ahead at the windows across the room when he asked, "Was anything found when her property was searched?"

Yuuri frowned disappointedly. "No, nothing really. Nothing incriminating, at least. Gunter wasn't too happy that she had some books and pamphlets denying that the Great One was around picking all the kings and queens, but other than that…"

"'_Nothing incriminating,_'" Wolfram scoffed. "That's heresy, Yuuri."

"I'm not going to arrest her for having an opinion, even if her opinion's wrong."

Wolfram didn't look pleased. His brow puckered and his mouth turned down severely, but he said nothing else to argue.

"You've met her before," Yuuri tried.

He expected Wolfram to refuse the invitation to talk again, but he surprised Yuuri by answering, "Once when I was a child and once when she was briefly at court during the war."

"And did you talk a lot?"

"She attempted a conversation with me during the war, but I avoided her. I spent most of my time with Elizabeth or in my lessons with Julia, at least until Julia was called away to join the medics on the front lines."

"What about when you were younger? Did you talk then?"

Wolfram adjusted his position and jabbed at one of the pillows against his back as if to force it into a more comfortable condition. "I spoke with her soon after I discovered that Conrart was human," he said.

"Oh…" Yuuri replied, barely able to repress a wince. "What did you talk about?"

"She spent an hour repeating everything her parents had ever told her about the humans. It bears no repeating, as I'm sure you can imagine the general tone of it."

That was true enough. After his encounter with her, Yuuri couldn't imagine Lady Scarlett could have much more to say on the subject. It had all been much the same—too much hate and not enough room for acceptance.

"And… what did _you_ say?" he asked.

"I didn't say much of anything," Wolfram admitted. His eyes went from the windows to the blanket covering his lower half. "I didn't want to hear it. I agreed to a few of her points and then tried to ignore the rest. When it became too much I left and returned to my room."

"How old were you?" Yuuri wondered.

"I was in my early forties."

That an eight-year-old had been forced to listen to one of Scarlett's tirades made Yuuri feel sick to his stomach. Yes, he could imagine rather easily what she must have said, and he knew how conflicted Wolfram must have felt hearing her abuse and trying to reconcile it with the fact that his brother was half-human and therefore half their enemy. How anyone could expect a kid to come out of a situation like that and not have a few lingering effects was beyond Yuuri. It kindled a feeling of protectiveness—both for Wolfram and their baby.

He didn't want his kid hearing anything like the things Wolfram had heard as a child. He didn't want anyone making his kid feel like he or she wasn't worth anything because of race. He didn't want anyone to have the chance to make his kid feel like Conrad had felt growing up, or like Wolfram had felt in the middle of it, or like Gwendal had felt trying to manage it all. He wanted his kid to grow up in a world where issues like that didn't exist, where everyone was free to be who they were and live their lives peacefully without fear of retribution from people who didn't understand.

It was up to him to make sure that sort of world existed, or at least he thought it was in his power to do so. It made him feel like a failure that all these problems were cropping up now. If only he could find a way to stop it. If only he could fix it before it was too late.

"You shouldn't listen to her, Wolf," he said. "It's just crazy talk."

Wolfram's eyes lifted to narrow in his direction. "Why? Because she despises humans?" he challenged, and then, "Do you think I'm crazy?"

Yuuri immediately realized he'd said the wrong thing. "No!" he exclaimed. "No, Wolf, this is different."

"How is it different?"

"Because she doesn't even try to tolerate anyone. She just hates without thinking about what it does to people."

"And I do?" Wolfram wondered.

"You were upset when you found out Conrad was human, weren't you?" Yuuri asked.

"I hated him."

"I don't think that's true…"

After their first heated days together Wolfram had never struck Yuuri as someone who hated people that didn't deserve it. He'd seen little signs of Wolfram's feelings for his half-human brother over the length of their friendship. It was too much for Yuuri to believe Wolfram had ever hated him, no matter what his husband would have liked people to believe. At most he'd seen discomfort, conflict, worry, and a stubbornness to keep back, to forestall any attachments and maintain a safe distance, not for any threat of physical danger but because of what loving a human truly meant.

Cautiously Yuuri climbed up onto the bed, making himself comfortable at Wolfram's feet, where he sat and lightly rubbed at Wolfram's ankles through the blankets—not enough to ease the pain away, but enough to offer comfort without crowding in too close.

"I think you always cared," he began, watching Wolfram carefully. "I think you've lived a long time under a lot of pressure, and for most of it you've wanted to do what's expected of you because that's all you've ever known, and for a while it was expected for you to hate humans, so you did. And now that things are different you're having a hard time separating the past from the present, especially when some people still expect you to think one way and other people expect you to think another way."

Wolfram's face went blank, but his eyes were full of turbulent emotion—anger and sadness and helplessness that mixed together and looked like agony.

"I think you're confused," Yuuri continued, "and it frustrates you because you've set expectations for yourself on top of all the ones everyone else already has for you, and you're disappointed that you haven't done as well as you'd hoped you would. You're trying so hard and everything just keeps circling back around, until you don't really know what to think anymore. Sometimes you fall back on what you used to think because it's easy, and other times you think what you want because you know it's right, but you don't know how to put the two of them together to make them work."

"You sound as if you speak from experience," Wolfram observed in a voice that sounded strained.

Yuuri looked at him with a sad little smile. "You know I do," he said.

It had taken him a long time—perhaps too long—to come to terms with his feelings for Wolfram. At first he truly had felt nothing more than friendship, not enough to justify an engagement or a wedding, but over time it had changed into something deeper. Even now he couldn't look back and pinpoint an exact moment. He didn't think there was one. It had been a gradual progression, filled with bickering and explosions of anger, confusion and those awkward mornings waking from dreams he hadn't wanted to admit to having, because he hadn't been ready for what they'd meant. He hadn't wanted to think that he'd been wrong about himself when he'd said he didn't like men—wasn't he supposed to know himself better than anyone else?—and he'd been too comfortable with how things already were to risk changing it.

Most of it he'd kept to himself, locked up inside his head where he battled it out on his own and came to a single dawning conclusion after nine years of frustration and denial—that he saw something more in Wolfram than he did in anyone else, that he felt something powerful and indescribable, something that took over his heart and mind and body and every one of his senses. Then his doubts were gone and he just _knew. _

At first he was scared by it, but then it felt like such a relief. It was like he'd been stuck in a continuous loop and finally found a straight path that made sense, or like he'd been caught in the middle of a storm that had finally gone away.

He'd never talked to Wolfram about it, had barely even been able to explain himself to Conrad in the thick of it, but if Wolfram's quandary was anything like that had been then Yuuri could at least begin to understand the magnitude of it. He had no hope of offering a solution. He didn't think there was an answer anyone could give Wolfram that would work. It was something Wolfram had to work out on his own, but Yuuri had hope that he could do it. Sometimes that hope bled into confidence, because Wolfram was _so _strong, and _so_ determined, and he already had love there to ease his way.

When he'd waited a few moments and it didn't seem as if Wolfram minded the proximity, Yuuri crawled up the mattress to sit beside him, taking one of Wolfram's hands and gently prying it from the blankets. He held it loosely, smoothing his thumb over the pale skin in a comforting circle. Wolfram looked first into his eyes, then down at their joined hand, looking for something Yuuri didn't know that he could see.

"I wish I could do something to help you," he said.

Wolfram looked back up at him, his eyes so full of so many things it was difficult to read them properly. His hand twisted around in Yuuri's grasp but didn't break free, merely turned to entwine their fingers and tighten in a desperate squeeze.

"Just stay with me," his husband replied in a whisper harsh with emotion. "Just stay. Don't leave."

"I'll never leave, Wolf," Yuuri said. "Nothing could ever make me leave."

It wasn't true. There was little Wolfram could ever say or do that would ever make Yuuri abandon him and give up hope—not now, not when they had so much worth fighting for—but that didn't mean there wasn't anything else out there that could possibly separate them from one another. The most obvious was death, of course, and beneath it all he was sure that was what Wolfram meant. It was what he always meant. It was what put a frown on Wolfram's face every year at the end of July, and it was what kept him from being able to love their child.

It wasn't anything like what Scarlett felt. Her words were full of too much malice to mistake them for anything but what they really were. Wolfram's had never been like that, even when he'd done what he could to give off that sort of impression. He'd never sounded like Scarlett did, never had so much darkness in his eyes, never shown it as more than denial and a sad attempt at bravado. After a while, Yuuri had been able to see right through it. Even now, when he worried for his husband and their child and the fate of their relationship, he thought it was different than that woman alone in her dark, chilling house, stewing in her hate until it became everything that she was.

Yuuri was sure there was some disgust there, a childhood terror that might never leave. He was sure there was some bitterness, too, and a sense of failure for succumbing to what Wolfram had likely always tried his best to avoid. But that wasn't everything—couldn't be everything, or else Wolfram never would have befriended him, never would have married him, never would have let their relationship go this far—and it was because of that that Yuuri could still have hope.

Wolfram had always had the heat of anger in his voice when he barked his insults, just the slightest trace of fear beneath the arrogance and the denial—never the biting cold of scorn, because Wolfram felt more love than hate, and even as a child he'd known what that would inevitably mean for him.

Loving a human was tragedy. It meant losing them long before one was ready to, to the process of life and death that could not be halted or slowed by any means but the blood they did not have.

In his heart Yuuri didn't believe Wolfram hated humans because he thought they were inferior.

He hated humans because he was never ready to let them go.

* * *

The twenty-ninth of July came with the dull shine of something long expected—a joyous occasion for the time it allowed his people to forget their worries and celebrate something greater, but something of a tedious affair when it passed as it always did and brought with it nothing new.

Yuuri could hear the exultant adulation, the raucous cheers of his people as the carriage trundled its way through the capital streets toward the outer wall and the tournament grounds set beyond the perimeter. The parted curtains allowed him a much smaller view than immersion on horseback would have provided, but it seemed not to deter the crowds that lined the streets. He waved cheerfully and smiled the bright, beaming smile that had so endeared him to them at the age of fifteen, and he let himself feel a momentary peace and joy in a world in which both were slipping away, for now at least his people were happy, and the darkness and misery of conflict and death seemed to have temporarily fled.

The flags of the Great Demon Kingdom fluttered in a soft breeze that did nothing to cool the sticky, humid summer air, joined by other banners and standards of noble families in attendance, perched atop carriages much like his own, or else displayed by standard bearers throughout the procession. He saw the proud eagle of Bielefeld, wings protectively displayed, the ferocious bear of Voltaire, the mystic stag of Christ, the boar of Spitzweg, the ethereal unicorn of Wincott, and others he did not recognize as quickly but ones he knew he'd seen before, on other such flags bearing familial coats-of-arms, or pressed into wax on official missives.

Each looked as impressive as the last, though none drew the cheers of the crowd quite like his pair of lions guarding a rising sun, the flapping fabric framed by a sky of clear, brilliant cerulean.

It was the perfect day for a party, for games and sports and tourneys, so that the recent scare in the form of thirteen dead and branded humans seemed at the moment a faraway misery, and the hardships to come remained shrouded in a mystery Yuuri left well enough alone for the time.

The only concern to stifle his joy on this day sat across from him rather than beside him, blond head turned resolutely away rather than facing him, green eyes focused elsewhere, preoccupied by distance and thought rather than the view of a jubilation his husband did not share.

"You could have stayed at the castle," Yuuri said, waving again and forcing his smile to remain on his face.

None of those who watched the carriage pass need know that all was not well within.

"Mmm," Wolfram said, distracted by his own musings, or else ignoring Yuuri outright.

He looked miserable. Wolfram's expression might be purposefully devoid of emotion, but his discomfort showed through in other ways. His posture was somewhat slumped, not the ramrod straight back and proper set of the shoulders Yuuri was used to, as Wolfram succumbed to the heat, to the disappointment of another passing year, and to the rounded heaviness of a body unused to supporting so much weight. His face was somewhat pinched, and frightfully pale under a sun that should have put color into his waxen cheeks, a few lose strands of his twisted and bound hair curling about his face from the humidity, or else sticking to his forehead and neck from a light sheen of sweat.

He wore too many clothes, Yuuri concluded. Wolfram was miserable enough on breezier, less humid summer days, encumbered by his ever growing stomach and floundering under the weight of obligation. Yuuri felt moderately comfortable in the formal uniform he'd been forced into despite the activities that would soon commence, though he wished he could remove his jacket without incurring another lecture about etiquette and proper modes of dress, but Wolfram, he thought, must be stifling. He'd layered on as much clothing as he could without looking too frumpy, like he meant to hide beneath the many fabrics, perhaps ashamed of his appearance—trousers with formal boots, and a jacket modified to account for the new shape of his once thin and wiry body, with all the cords, brooches, medals, and other accoutrements to denote his station, as if anyone could not but look at him and know that here sat Wolfram von Bielefeld, youngest son of the former Queen Cecilie, nephew of the great Waltorana von Bielefeld and one-time regent Stoffel von Spitzweg, brother to Lords Gwendal von Voltaire and Conrart Weller, a former King himself for a time, the twenty-eighth Demon King of the Great Demon Kingdom, spouse now to the twenty-seventh, Yuuri Shibuya, a foreigner from the realm of Earth widely heralded (undeservedly, Yuuri thought) as the greatest Demon King since the Great One had sat upon the throne at Blood Pledge Castle four-thousand years ago.

It was a long list of notable relations one could see simply by looking into Wolfram's face—at his pale, clear skin, his fine aristocratic features, his curling blond hair and stunning eyes too much like his mother's not to be recognizable.

"You look tired," Yuuri said, splitting his attention between the crowds out the window and his too-quiet husband. They'd just passed beneath the shadow of a large cathedral, a great gothic-like construction that stretched high toward the great expanse of the blue, blue sky.

"I slept long enough," Wolfram said.

"You look pale," Yuuri pointed out.

Wolfram's mouth curved low and he looked ready to spout off some acidic comment about Yuuri stating the obvious, but his lips clamped together tightly and he made no other response but another unconcerned sounding, "Mmm."

"I can have Gisela come look at you," Yuuri tried to offer kindly.

"Gisela came to see me yesterday. She said I'm fairing well."

"You don't look well."

Wolfram answered with a pretentious sniff.

"Wolf," Yuuri said.

"It's the twenty-ninth of July," Wolfram said.

Yuuri paused, hesitant, and turned from the window sadly.

"I am allowed to feel unwell on the twenty-ninth of July," Wolfram finished.

It had not always been this way, Yuuri remembered. In his younger years, before his steadily advancing age became obvious to everyone, Yuuri's husband had celebrated this day with only the sort of reservations and propriety that had been bred into him as a Prince by formal tutelage, the instruction of men who knew well their place in the world. Wolfram had never been as exuberant as the common crowds, nor as rowdy as Murata often was when surrounded by a gaggle of beautiful women, nor as sociable as Lady Celi in a ballroom full of finely dressed people, but he would smile a small, fleeting smile at Yuuri's good cheer, drink of the good wine, select of few more pastries for himself than his self-restraint might usually allow, and dance the night away with Greta—so small then, and quite young herself—held securely in his arms.

But when Yuuri grew taller, when his voice lost some of that boyish babble, when he grew into his gangly limbs and became a man, when Greta blossomed into womanhood, beautiful and statuesque in rich gowns so far removed from play-clothes spotted with dirt and the happy games of a little girl, Wolfram withdrew and faced the twenty-ninth of July with a quiet misery. He denied himself wine, he picked at his food, he found no interest in sweets, he refused all invitations to dance, and his smiles grew strained, if they ever crossed his face at all.

"I'm sorry," Yuuri said, and could no longer smile himself. He tried to catch Wolfram's eye, but his husband refused to meet him.

"It is no fault of your own," Wolfram said.

"You could have stayed behind," Yuuri reminded him again.

"And how would that look, if the Prince Consort was to abstain from the King's birthday celebrations?"

"You'd have a pretty good excuse."

Yuuri's eyes fell to Wolfram's stomach, swollen large beneath the layers of his clothes, protruding impressively, the skin stretched and marked from the undertaking. Curiously, Wolfram's hands rose to it, settled atop it and clutched it convulsively—a rarity, when Wolfram took such great pains to ignore it.

"Not much longer," Yuuri said, not sure if he meant it as a reassurance concerning Wolfram's condition, or if he meant the comment more as an observation concerning the end of their short journey through the capital.

"Mmm," Wolfram agreed. His eyes never turned to Yuuri's. "Not much longer…"

He sounded quiet and strangely reverent, his eyes unfocused, his voice low and tenuous, as if to intone some strange portent, some prophecy the humidity and summer heat had induced.

Yuuri should have questioned it, but instead he let it be, wary that further conversation might worsen Wolfram's mood.

The fields beyond the capital were awash with color and dotted with hoards of people. Tents had been erected here and there, portions of the meadow had been sectioned off into temporary constructions, stadiums and lists and rings, all for the amusement of the King and those who had come to celebrate the day. The smell of food, sweet pastries, imported spices, and roasting meats, perfumed the summer breeze, masking the stench of sweating bodies and the more earthy smells of dirt, grass, and flora. Wine flowed freely, passed in cups filled from great casks or fountains erected to serve and dazzle.

It was all very grand—too grand, perhaps, considering the changing atmosphere of the times and Yuuri's more common tastes, but fifteen years was enough time to get used to such displays, and Yuuri had come to accepted them with a sort of bemused resignation.

Their carriage came to a stop. Yuuri burst out with something like a youthful energy that came across to people now more as a matured virility, especially as he extended his hand to Wolfram with the sort of regality he'd once had trouble adopting but had slowly acquired with experience, and helped his husband, heavy with their first child and potential heir, from the carriage. Wolfram's expression when it met the crowd was properly reserved, but not terribly unkind. He looked around with a veiled interest and accepted the bows, curtsies, and well wishes with grace, though his discomfort and sadness had not left him. It was merely kept hidden beneath a virtuous and princely façade.

He was striking, naturally lovely from the exquisite mix of Bielefeld and Spitzweg traits, the awe he inspired—particularly among the common people—amplified by his rounded belly which might contain a future king. He stood out as much as Yuuri did, if not more so now, pale and golden, near-angelic if not for the formidable strength in his eyes. Yuuri felt immense pride in guiding him through the crowds, whatever reservations he might otherwise feel, however conflicted their relationship might currently be on both ends. Proper etiquette dictated that Wolfram's hand rest gently on his arm, but this did not satisfy Yuuri. To hell with proper etiquette. He slid his arm behind Wolfram's back instead, smiling in response to the many shows of deference and discernible mutters of praise.

The last traces of childishness, and the romantic ideals he might have often viewed the world through in his youth, allowed Yuuri to envision for himself how they must look together—he dark and joyous, Wolfram fair and refined, young still, but mature, gallant. Even now Yuuri sometimes suffered from a streak of inferiority, and he looked between them, amazed, and wondered at his luck, that he, a normal boy from a (mostly) normal family, from such a place as Earth, hand landed here beside a true bred prince, spoiled to be sure (and prideful), so far out of Yuuri's league it often astounded him just to look at him, and he was brought back to that moment by the steps of Blood Pledge Castle, he travel-weary and covered in dirt, and Wolfram perfect and pristine, hand on his hip while those large eyes stared, and stared, and stared.

If he'd known then that this was what would become of them fifteen years later, he never would have believed it, not simply because Wolfram was also male, but because he was Wolfram, too good for such a bumbling idiot as Yuuri—too good, Yuuri thought, for anyone.

"Here," Yuuri said, and helped Wolfram into a cushioned seat from which to view the many attractions. "Sit. Rest."

Waltorana approached, tall and dignified with a goblet of drink—not wine, at Yuuri's insistence, though Wolfram accepted it as gladly as if it were something stronger.

"Are you well?" Waltorana asked.

Yuuri expected Wolfram might be more inclined to converse with his uncle than he had with him, but Wolfram only nodded and answered with the same quiet "Mmm" he'd used on Yuuri.

It could have been a joyous day, the kind to inscribe itself upon his memory and later rise with a burst of nostalgia, full of light and laughter, fondness and cheer, good-humor and gaiety. For the most part the day passed as such, but for Wolfram's somber presence beside him.

There were the requisite events, put on in Yuuri's honor, all for his entertainment on this his thirtieth birthday, as every year the people and his retainers seemed to forget that he took more enjoyment from being involved than from sitting and observing. During the first hours he managed to contain himself admirably. He sat and laughed at the pageants, the tumblers and musicians and performers, and held Wolfram's hand loose in his, both to comfort his husband as well as to restrain himself from rising to take part in the entertainment. He accepted food and drink when it was offered to him, conversed with those courtiers that approached him, put on the act of King and let everyone think that the energetic fifteen-year-old boy who was incapable of sitting still was gone.

He had much less luck when the games began. The Sand Bear tricks he was happy to watch from the sidelines of the ring, wary as he always was of their size and strength and occasional ferocity, but the sporting events he had much more trouble abstaining from. Active and athletic by nature, it was nigh impossible to sit and view from a safe distance when every fiber screamed for him to join in. Watching for Yuuri was not nearly as fun as it was to participate.

There was jousting, an older sport that had nearly fallen out of style in the Great Demon Kingdom, though it amused Yuuri in the way much of this world had amused him in his youth—swords of legend, dragons, heroic acts of knightly virtue, those things one read about in fantasy novels or history books but never expected to see in life. Dangerous the joust might have been at one time, and could be still today if taken more seriously, but much of the formality of it had died away, so that it resembled the sort of farcical exhibitions one might watch at a fair on Earth rather than the chivalric sport it had once been. Yuuri had learned it years ago, on one of his childish whims, to the dissatisfaction of Wolfram and Gwendal, and the amusement of Conrad and Murata.

Only Wolfram's presence, heavy with tension beside him, kept him still as he watched.

The melee, on the other hand, he was happy to leave to those more skilled in fighting, even as it was done with blunted swords. Many hours Conrad might have spent training him at the sword, assisted occasionally by a scoffing Wolfram (complaining always that Conrad went too easy on Yuuri), but Yuuri knew himself to be little more than a novice, decent enough to defend himself in a pinch, but he didn't possess the necessary skill for these sorts of tournaments, and he had no trouble admitting it to himself. He was more pleased to watch it culminate in a one-on-one between Conrad and Yozak than to embarrass himself by making the attempt. He knew exactly what Wolfram (and likely many of the others) would say if he tried.

A King should never stoop so low as to embarrass himself in front of his subjects (a crime Yuuri had committed one too many times already), particularly at a sport a true King should by all rights be proficient in.

He could not say the same for the baseball game, and it was as the sun began to sink low in the sky that Yuuri could contain himself no longer, and with a quick, chaste kiss to one of Wolfram's pale hands and a swiftly mumbled apology, he stood to enter the stadium and don the gear and uniform he did not wear enough these days, ever since his marriage five years ago and the adoption of a more serious demeanor toward his duties.

The game had lapsed into its fifth inning when Yuuri realized that something was very wrong.

Every once in the while he would look into the crowd, either between innings or on the way back from the mound after conferring with his pitcher, and his eyes would inevitably spy Wolfram seated in the royal box. At first he thought it was only the heat that made Wolfram look so troubled and uncomfortable, and Yuuri's common behavior that made Wolfram's face twist with what he thought must be annoyance. It was not until he noticed Wolfram's hands migrating to his stomach with an uncommon frequency that Yuuri began to grow concerned.

Before the bottom of the third inning began, Yuuri approached the fence to check on him.

"Are you okay?" he called. His question had Lady Celi, sitting close beside Wolfram, staring at her son fretfully.

"Yes, of course," Wolfram said, his voice not quite strong enough to be satisfying. Yuuri could barely hear it over the sounds of the crowd.

"You should go back to the castle," Yuuri said, "and have Gisela look at you. You've been up since this morning. You need to rest."

"I've been sitting all day. If anything, I need to walk."

"We can walk," Lady Celi offered, rising from her chair and moving to help Wolfram from his. "Come, you'll feel better once you've stretched your legs and had more to drink."

But when Yuuri looked back into the royal box during the break between the top and bottom of the fourth, Wolfram had returned and looked no better. His face was still too pale beneath the bright sunlight, his posture tense and rigid, and his hands had returned to his stomach, not gently caressing as Yuuri often hoped he would as a sign of affection for their baby, but clutching desperately. Wolfram's eyes, once dark with despair, had brightened with anxiety, yet when Yuuri turned to make his way over, Wolfram glared and shooed him off irritably.

"Go finish your game," he said, but could not manage to scoff as he might have in years before.

And then the fifth inning came. Yuuri crouched behind the plate, intensely focused on delivering the sign for a fastball with a man on second, when the sounds of the crowd, the cheering, whistling, hollering, and baiting, suddenly changed.

He heard a few voices shouting, not in glee but in desperation, and when the pitcher fell out of his wind-up to stare behind Yuuri into the seats, Yuuri turned while ripping his mask from his face, and his stomach swooped low, stealing his breath in alarm.

Wolfram was being helped from his seat by his mother, his face twisted not in annoyance but in pain, his arms wrapped tight around his belly, as his hands had not been enough to stave it. Gwendal stood near, pensive and worried, and Waltorana and Rupert Bleddyn forced a break through the crowd, the former's expression thunderous and the other's more near to panic than Yuuri had ever seen it.

Yuuri ran to meet them, dropping his mitt and mask behind home plate, hastily stripping off the rest of his gear as he went, dashing into the dugout and through the passageway that led outside the stadium when he took the right paths, circling to the point he knew the others would be exiting from. He got there before them as the going was slow for them with Wolfram stumbling along. His husband leaned heavily against Lady Celi, white with fear as he hissed and groaned in distress.

He'd have fallen if Yuuri and Lady Celi hadn't been there to catch him, and his doleful moans caught in his throat, cut off by a terrible, agonized scream.

"What happened? What's going on?" Yuuri asked in a rush, though he wasn't as stupid as some people might make him out to be. He was afraid he already knew the answer.

"He needs a healer," Lady Celi said. Her face showed her worry even as her voice sounded level.

"The castle is too far," Waltorana barked.

"Is Gisela not in attendance?" Gwendal asked.

"She couldn't," Gunter's voice replied from somewhere nearby. "There were patients that required her attention in the infirmary."

"My Lord, he can't remain here," Rupert said, though it was unclear exactly which of the many surrounding Lords he was speaking to.

Yuuri could see none of them. He stared into Wolfram's face and forgot to breathe.

He didn't know what the inevitable decision was. He could barely hear anything more over the sound of Wolfram's screaming and the mad beating of his own heart. Somehow they were ushered back toward the carriage, stumbling and half-panicked the entire way. While Yuuri and Waltorana helped Wolfram into the carriage and laid him out on one of the seats, Rupert, joined now by Conrad, mounted his horse to ride ahead and began to clear a path through the streets.

Yuuri sat and gripped tight to Wolfram's hand, brushed some loose strands of hair out of his face and did what he could to shush him as the carriage bounced swiftly along, leaving the concerned and confused crowd of courtiers and common-folk behind to whisper and gossip.

"It's okay," he said, without knowing for whose benefit he uttered the empty reassurances. "It's okay. It's going to be okay."

"No!" Wolfram wailed, and it was such a sad, plaintive sound that tears sprung into Yuuri's eyes. "No, I don't want to! I don't want to!"

Wolfram's eyes were unfocused and dry, his breathing erratic, his voice hoarse in a throat abused by frequent screaming.

"Wolfram, listen," Yuuri tried again. "Listen to me, okay? You're going to be fine. It'll be over soon. It… not much longer, Wolf, and then it'll be done and we'll never… I swear we don't ever have to do this again."

If Wolfram heard him, he gave no response but to utter another pitiful moan.

Had circumstances been different, happier, had Wolfram not shown such an aversion to bearing children, had he not been so afflicted by the prejudices of his youth as he was presently, Yuuri might have thought differently, whatever he said about the matter. He could not deny that he wanted this baby, that he'd wanted it since the moment he'd learned of it, and that to be rid of it would have caused him much more distress than he'd shown at the time. It was an innocent life, one thing he'd sworn always to protect; it was his, and it was Wolfram, theirs together and more meaningful for it.

He liked children, however poorly he might often fair with them when he actually had them in his presence, and perhaps he was old-fashioned to carry with him the ideal of a family complete with one, or two, or three. In brief moments he felt guilty to admit to having given Wolfram's discomfort and antipathy, Yuuri thought of a future in which Wolfram was no longer plagued by his past; he thought of a daughter, a girl not to replace Greta, but to warm their hearts as she had all the same, and a boy, too, hearty and strong the way Wolfram used to be. Two, he'd thought, was a good number. Two like he and Shori. Or three, perhaps, like Wolfram and his two older brothers, unless Greta was added to the mix, which he thought she should rightly be, in which case four…

But no. Not two, or three, or four. Just this one. With this he would be satisfied, he knew, because he could not bear to see Wolfram like this again, writhing on the carriage bench and screaming intermittently, terrifying Yuuri to such an extent that he could no longer think of a happy future, but one desolate and bleak, and he knew such a fear that sickness rose in his throat, barely swallowed down.

Thirty years old and he didn't yet know how to be strong. He could pretend, could show his people a confident face that didn't always express his true feelings, but he still succumbed to worry and fear as much as he had as a teenager, when all of this was new and he could understand so little of it. In everything that he'd faced, he'd had other people there to be strong for him—Conrad mostly, and Wolfram when Conrad was gone—comforting him, leading him along, supporting him, giving him a firm foundation from which to grow.

And maybe he'd grown. Maybe he wasn't the boy he used to be, but he still didn't know how to be strong on his own.

He didn't know how to be strong for Wolfram, when for fifteen years it had always been that Wolfram was strong for him.

"It's okay," he mumbled futilely, struggling against tears. "Wolfram, please, be okay."

The carriage jerked to a stop, though Yuuri knew they had not yet arrived at the castle, for not enough time had passed. The door jerked open and Waltorana stood to usher them out, tearing Yuuri from Wolfram and lifting his ailing nephew as easily as if Wolfram were still a small child.

Yuuri reached for his husband, who screamed once more before he seemed to faint, but Waltorana shook his head and turned with him to stride off.

They had come to the cathedral Yuuri had seen as they'd passed earlier on their way through the capital. Waltorana burst through the doors and bellowed for aid, scaring a group of peaceful pilgrims and gaining the attention of a man in dark, billowing robes.

Yuuri noted green hair and warm, serene brown eyes. A hand touched Wolfram's forehead, another his stomach, and the man mumbled something, directing Waltorana aft and calling to him a handful of other men.

"Wait!" Yuuri cried. "Wait, where are you taking him?"

"Your Majesty, please, we must see to the Prince immediately," one of the voices said.

"Then see to him, but I'm coming with you!"

"You will not!" Waltorana said, while a hand that felt like Conrad's rested on Yuuri's shoulder, restraining him.

"Wolfram!" Yuuri called as Wolfram was passed from Waltorana to one of the surrounding men, who hurried with him to the back. "Wait, Wolfram! Stop! Let go! That's an order!"

"Yuuri," Conrad said.

It was his name rather than his title that staid him, and Yuuri watched as Wolfram was whisked away. Reassurances were uttered by a few of the churchmen, a door opened on squealing hinges, heavy and old. He watched Wolfram's blond head, lolling, unconscious, pass through it, and then it shut, a loud 'thump' that startled him with its finality.

Then the church was deathly quiet. Yuuri felt a cold hand grip his heart, twisting violently.

He stood, helpless, among the others—Lady Celi whose calm began to crack, Murata who stood, too sedate with his hands clasped behind him, Gwendal who frowned darkly and Waltorana who matched him, Conrad who strived to remain composed with a hand firm on Yuuri's shoulder, and Rupert who fretted restlessly, pacing back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

Yuuri saw none of them. All he could see was Wolfram's face ingrained in his memory, smiling as he had fifteen years ago when he'd stopped Yuuri from falling and pulled him from the cliff.

No one could stop the falling now.

**TBC...**


End file.
